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National convention comes to Denver for third time, while J-Day returns to Lory Student Center

May 26, 2015

Spring brings national convention to Mile High City
The final tally was 2,976 attendees for the Spring JEA/NSPA National High School Journalism Convention, hosted by CHSPA in Denver at the Sheraton. The contributions of a large and talented local committee helped make the event successful, from the terrific media tours to the outstanding Write-off speakers to the t-shirts and hoodies, that sold out immediately.

Being sandwiched between the largest convention ever, in Washington, D.C., last November, and what is anticipated to be another large convention next fall, in Orlando, Fla., likely kept our total numbers down, but the slightly smaller numbers meant better access to sessions and less time waiting for elevators.

The local sponsoring organization receives revenue from a combination of registration fees ($1.50 per paid registrant) and shirt sales, plus we received some scholarship support from the Denver Post and the Colorado Press Association Foundation. We are still waiting for a final accounting and distribution of funds from NSPA, but anticipate about $7,000 in revenue for CHSPA resulting from our work on the convention.

This was the third time the national convention has come to Denver. The first was in 1992, at the Adams Mark Hotel, and the second was in 2007, at the Hyatt Regency at the Convention Center.

 

J-Day returns to Lory Student Center
Attendance rebounded from 2013, when the renovation work on LSC closed down the facility for over a year. J-Day was actually the very first large event to utilize the facility. Two JEA National Yearbook Advisers of the Year were featured: Brenda Gorsuch and Cindy Todd. There were over 50 learning sessions offered, all topped off with the awards ceremony, where Best of Show awards and All-Colorado certificates were distributed.

The Lory Student Center is booked for Oct. 8 for our 2015 J-Day, and the registration prices remain the same ($20 for students and $35 for advisers).

 

SoCo Media Day has disappointing attendance
The fifth year of this outreach to schools in the southeast part of the state was a great experience for those attending, but with only 58 registrants, did not meet our goals. The CSU-Pueblo site is excellent and the faculty of the Communications program are very supportive, but the timing of the event (we have tried later in the fall (late October) and earlier (Sept. 18 last fall), and no date seems to work well.

This past fall we were fortunate to have Justin Daigle, CJE, keynote and lead sessions, along with sessions from Jack Kennedy, MJE, Peter Griffin, CJE (Jostens) and Rob Rathbun (Balfour).

The continuation of this conference will be discussed during the June 4 CSMA board meeting.

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