Journalism Day 2018: what to learn and take away

The Carson Complex’s journalism class set off to the California State University Northridge campus to compete in Journalism Day on Saturday, Oct. 20.

The event, organized by High School Insider, Cal State Northridge Journalism department, and the Southern California Journalism Education Association, aims to bring students together and host journalism workshops, while awarding exceptional writing in competitions. Students could choose between five categories to compete in: news, features, sports, opinion, and photojournalism.

“I chose to compete under the sports category. When we got there, we were split into groups and given a prompt based on the category we chose and competed against students from other high schools. I also remember them helping us and giving us tips on what articles would best suit the L.A. Times,” Carson junior Manaia Moala said.

Students could also speak to professional journalists and hear why journalism was important to them, and to the world.

“I’m curious about pursuing a career in journalism because I think it’s important to get people’s voices heard,” Carson senior Alberto Diaz said. “The journalists there gave us advice and shared ways in which we could better succeed in the business, it was really helpful.”

Journalism Day also seems to have given students a new perspective. There was a lot to take away and implement into the classroom.

“With journalism at school, there’s almost an established way for things to be done, but that’s not really the case. You actually have a lot of freedom and you should use that to your advantage. You can also be very creative. Nothing that we do is truly set in stone, there’s leeway within assignments,” said Matthew Alvarez, CHS senior and editor-in-chief of Carson’s school newspaper the Trailblazer.

Overall, this was an eye-opening experience for all that attended. It was educational and advanced everyone’s knowledge on the power of journalism.