Photo Credit | TBD
At the beginning of the month, Arkansas Tech University’s journalism department took four students to the annual Southeast Journalism Conference. The conference was held at Mississippi State University from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2.
The SEJC is attended by journalism students and serves as an opportunity to make connections while getting advice from professionals in the field. This year, a total of 27 schools from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee attended the conference.
The activities began on February 1 with informational sessions hosted by media professionals where students could ask questions about the field. They covered topics ranging from “Covering Sports in the Age of Upheaval,” “Keeping Up with AI Advances,” and “National Newsroom Culture.”
One professional in attendance on the newsroom culture panel was Isabelle Taft, a reporter for The New York Times. After the panel, she talked with members of The Arka-Tech and answered questions from both the students and their Faculty Advisor, Tommy Mumert.
From left to right, Emily Tyler, Madelyn Wheat, Isabelle Taft, Kiya Lawson, Nikki Victory, Tommy Mumert
Along with the informational sessions, students could choose to participate in on-site competitions in a wide range of skills and professions.
Representing ATU, The Arka-Tech’s Nikki Victory competed in the sports writing and design categories, while Tech TV’s Emily Tyler competed in news anchoring.
Victory won third place with her graphic for the design competition. The topic for this category was “How do the United States, Mexico, and Canada compare?” Competitors were given freedom to decide what information to compare and were encouraged to choose statistics from the CIA World Factbook. Victory’s focus was waste generation.
Victory’s graphic on pollution generation by country
She then moved onto the sports writing competition, where she and some of her competitors attended a sold-out SEC men’s basketball game between Mississippi State University and the University of Missouri. These 13 students got to use the exclusive media entrance and view the game from the press box.
For Tyler’s anchoring competition, students had to demonstrate their reporting skills by reviewing and reading a script as they would for a live news broadcast. She and the other competitors were mic-ed up and sent into the studio individually, where they read three stories after a mock news intro played.
“I got to connect with some incredible and passionate student journalists and learned what their programs were like,” Tyler said regarding her experience at the conference. “I’m hoping we are able to go again so I can compete in something new and challenge myself even more. The whole experience really made me more excited about what I’m doing.”
After the informational sessions and competitions concluded, the evening of February 1 was celebrated with a banquet. The hosts of SEJC presented the “Best of the South” awards and included a keynote speech from Sports Illustrated writer, Ross Delleger.
The morning of February 2 included a keynote speech from Isabelle Taft and the presentation of awards for on-site competition winners. During which, Victory was presented with a pin for achieving third place in design.
Nikki holding her third-place pin from the graphic design competition.
Afterward, The Arka-Tech members said their goodbyes to Mississippi and began their six-hour drive back to Arkansas.
