A small group of Galway High School reporters ventured to The Big Apple’s largest journalism school last week to learn how to sharpen the skills of our own Eagles Media Center.

Students from all three branches of EMC³ (ScoresUp, The Footprint, and GTV) attended the three day long, 86^th annual Columbia Scholastic Press Association conference. Upwards of four thousand journalism students from across the nation also explored the hundreds of sessions that Columbia had to offer. Presenters from all over the country shared their knowledge about newspaper, magazine, video, and online media productions. Mr. Swain, Mrs. Ostrander and Mr. Ubriaco even conducted two sessions themselves, where they shared their knowledge and wisdom about running EMC³ and publishing The Life Between Two Cities.

Over the three days, everyone was able to attend ten different seminars of their choice, and everyone learned new skills, unique to their role in EMC³ . Naturally, some workshops were more helpful than others, but in the end, everyone was satisfied with what they had learned. Karenna Martin commented, “It was a valuable opportunity because we were able to compare publications with hundreds of other students from all across the country. We learned a lot of new techniques that could really help improve EMC³. It was great learning about campus life, and the city is amazing too.”  Angelina Valente added, “This trip was a great opportunity to learn about the many ways to improve all the different aspects of our club and make it better all around.”

This was a great opportunity to learn in a larger college-setting as opposed to our small high school. Between classes, everyone enjoyed walking around the beautiful Columbia campus, in the gorgeous weather that they were so fortunate to have during the entire trip. Sophomore, Lindsay Martin, said that, “The journalism trip was a great learning experience and walking around New York City was awesome too.”

The main goal of this trip is for the group of students and advisors who went to the convention, to share the information that they learned with the other staff members of our three EMC³ branches. The three advisers are currently working on organizing a way for those who attended the convention to teach the workshops that they found most helpful to others who were unable to attend.

In addition to the seminar at Columbia, the group also spent plenty of time exploring and enjoying New York City. There was plenty of laughter at all times, at everything and anything and someone in particular from the group. Look out for “EMC³ takes on NYC Part II” in the next issue of The Footprint to find out all the details about what happened in the downtime of the journalism trip.