On Monday, the editors for the High School paper, The Spud, took a trip to Lincoln for the annual National High School Press Association (NHSPA) Fall Convention. Brian Gould, Kolton Quick, Madison Hiemstra, Morgan Johnston and Peyton Stoike all participated in various workshops and exercises to help make The SPUD the best school newspaper it could be.

The day started off with Keynote speaker, national award winning advisor Jim Streisel. Streisel teaches Journalism courses at Carmel High School in Indiana. Throughout his speech Streisel stated “News is like broccoli, so make it tasty”. He explained that our generation is very different from the “X generation” in which he grew up. His reference to broccoli was actually quite interesting. He asked for a show of hands of everyone who liked and ate plain broccoli. Naturally not very many people raised their hands, but after he explained how “seasoning” the broccoli would make it more appealing, many more people raised their hands. His reference to broccoli is telling us as writers and entertainers to take something that could be boring or plain and turn it into something that will grab everyone’s attention. “I thought it was clever how he made the analogy and it cleared up the difference between news that people don’t pay much attention to compared to news people actually do pay attention to.” Colum Editor, Morgan Johnston said.

There were three sessions at the convention. Each session had eight different workshops that students and advisors could attend. The sessions ranged anywhere from Feature Writing with UNL Journalism Professor Michelle Hassler to Covering Sports with Lincoln Journal Star sports reporter Brian Rosenthal.

Editor-In-Chief, Brian Gould went to Sports Journalism with UNL Photojournalism professor Bruce Thomson. Gould stated “it helped a lot about different questions I had about camera settings to help take pictures in poorly lit places.”

All of the editors learned various new skills and procedures to pass on to the other writers to help The SPUD become a more efficient school newspaper. Go check out what changes we’ve made at ahsthespud.com!