High school students from around the state gather Monday (April 1) at UM to participate in the 2019 Mississippi Scholastic Press Association’s annual spring convention. Students have opportunities to attend seminars aimed at specific areas of the publishing field. Photo courtesy UM Division of Outreach and Continuing Education
OXFORD, Miss. – Hundreds of Mississippi’s aspiring writers, publishers and journalists will head to Oxford next week for the 72nd Mississippi Scholastic Press Association Convention hosted by the University of Mississippi.
Students from high schools across the state will come for the one-day event Monday (April 1) to hear speakers, participate in seminars and immerse themselves in the Ole Miss campus.
The convention helps high school students who work for their respective school newspapers, yearbooks, broadcasts and literary magazines realize they share a passion for publication with hundreds of peers in the state, said R.J. Morgan, MSPA director.
“(The convention) is a great opportunity for the university and a great opportunity for Mississippi high school kids to get on a college campus and see what college life is like,” said Morgan, an instructional assistant professor of journalism at UM.
“There will be a lot of these students who have never been on a college campus, so letting them see how college works and exposing them to that environment gets them thinking in terms of attending college. The convention really serves as a rallying point and pep rally in terms of helping these students understand that this is something they should feel proud of, something they can hang their hat on.”
The highlight of each year’s convention is the MSPA awards ceremony, Morgan said. This year, besides announcing more than 100 winners and finalists, including best-of honors for several publication types, the MSPA will announce a new honor called the All-Mississippi recognition. Ten students were selected from a field of 20 candidates who submitted portfolios of their journalism work.
More than 700 individual pieces of work were submitted for the various prizes.
“The awards are really what the kids are most excited about,” Morgan said.
This year’s Pam Hamilton Keynote Address will be delivered by Ronnie Agnew, an Ole Miss alumnus and director of Mississippi Public Broadcasting.
Agnew is a veteran of the newspaper and news industry, previously serving as the executive editor of The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson.
High school students at the 2018 MSPA spring convention listen to keynote speaker Jesse J. Holland. This year’s keynote speaker is Mississippi Public Broadcasting director Ronnie Agnew. Photo courtesy UM Division of Outreach and Continuing Education
“(Agnew’s) wealth of experience in both print and digital media, as well as his dedication to education and serving others, made him a natural choice to deliver this address to our statewide audience,” Morgan said.
Other speakers include Pablo Correa, a documentary filmmaker working on a feature-length film about Fannie Lou Hamer, and Lori Oglesbee-Petter, a nationally recognized newspaper and yearbook adviser who serves as an advocate for First Amendment rights.
The range of skills and expertise these and other speakers bring to the convention provides students with a variety of options catered to their respective interests, Morgan said.
“There’s never been a greater need for good communicators,” Morgan said. “The number of platforms and reasons to tell those stories has greatly diffused in the last decade, and we really need good storytellers to cut through the noise in our society.
“We hope to help these students find their voice and refine that voice and teach them going forward how to be good citizens and good communicators.”
Besides attending the convention, Correa will discuss his work with the “Fannie Lou Hamer’s America” documentary team in a separate event at 5:30 p.m. Monday in the Overby Center Auditorium. Free and open to the public, the evening event “will be geared toward a university/community audience,” Morgan said.
Registration is $25 per student and includes breakfast and lunch. Advisers attend free. Registration fees should be paid at check-in from 8 to 9 a.m. on Monday. MSPA accepts cash or checks.
Students also can bring selected works for contest entries the day of the event. The carry-in competition fee is $5 per entry.
The MSPA was created in 1947 to “support, promote and nurture journalism in a high school setting through workshops, competitions, conventions and online aids and advice. Membership is open to any Mississippi school that has a newspaper, yearbook, literary magazine, online publication, broadcast and/or journalism class.” It is housed at the university.
UM has hosted the spring convention since its inception. Two years ago, a fall convention was added at the University of Southern Mississippi. The event usually draws approximately 500-600 high school students, Morgan said.
For more information on the convention or MSPA, visit its website.