Mississippi Scholastic Press Association Archives - School of Journalism and New Media

Posts Tagged ‘Mississippi Scholastic Press Association’

University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media professor named Master Journalism Educator

Posted on: December 10th, 2020 by ldrucker

A University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media professor has been named a Master Journalism Educator.

The Journalism Education Association has announced that R.J. Morgan, Ph.D., who leads the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association, has completed the requirements for Master Journalism Educator certification.

The certification recognizes teachers who have achieved national standards of preparation to teach high school journalism classes and advise student media.

The certification requirements include a minimum of five years of experience in journalism teaching and advising, previous achievement of Certified Journalism Educator status, completion of a JEA-approved project, and passing an examination that demonstrates the educator’s proficiency in journalism teaching and advising.

“It’s quite a thrill and an honor to be considered a ‘master’ in a field that has given me so much,” Morgan said. “I’ve been shaped by and in love with journalism education since the first day I joined my school newspaper staff in the eighth grade, and it is my life’s work to be able to help create similarly impactful classroom experiences with both my own students and with others from across the state of Mississippi and beyond.”

Morgan is also a JEA Certified Journalism Educator who earned his Ph.D. in K-12 education leadership. He earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Mississippi State University and previously taught at Starkville High School, where he received honors including STAR Teacher, Third Congressional District Teacher of the Year, the Paul Cuicchi Innovative Educator Award, and the MSPA Adviser of the Year (three times).

His media experience includes writing for The Associated Press, Sporting News magazine, The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal and The Commercial Appeal. Morgan is the recipient of the 2018 Elizabeth Dickey Distinguished Service Award from the Southern Interscholastic Press Association.

Mississippi Scholastic Press Association establishes endowment to invest in youth

Posted on: September 23rd, 2019 by ldrucker

More than 500 aspiring teenage writers, publishers and journalists from all corners of the state shared their work and learned from high-profile communicators last spring at the 72nd Mississippi Scholastic Press Association Statewide Spring Convention, hosted by the University of Mississippi.

Now MSPA Director R.J. Morgan hopes the association’s recent $60,000 gift establishing the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association Endowment will ensure that these students and more like them will continue to enjoy robust annual conventions and other strategic support from MSPA for years to come.

“This endowment is a historic moment for us, and it comes at a critical time for both journalism and education in our country,” Morgan said. “We are hoping to build a financial foundation that will allow us to continue meeting the needs of our current members while better positioning us for long-term growth and success deep into the distant future.”

High school students attending the 72nd Mississippi Scholastic Press Association Statewide Spring Convention, hosted by UM, receive awards for their outstanding work.

MSPA was founded in 1947 to support, promote and nurture journalism and marketing communications programs in the high school setting. It achieves its goals through workshops, competitions and conventions and by providing ongoing assistance and advice for teachers and students involved in producing their schools’ student publications.

With a current membership of 110 publications from 67 different schools, MSPA is open to any Mississippi school that has a newspaper, yearbook, literary magazine, online publication, broadcast and/or journalism or marketing class.

MSPA hosts two statewide student conventions each school year — at UM and the University of Southern Mississippi — and a three-day institute each summer for teachers who advise student publications.

“The conventions are great opportunities for Mississippi high school students to get a taste of life on a college campus,” said Morgan, an instructional associate professor in the UM School of Journalism and New Media. “They learn a lot while they’re here — practical ideas they can take home to improve their school publications.

“But the conventions also serve as a rallying point and pep rally for many students, because often they are not praised as highly as, for example, their football team or marching band,” he continued. “We want students to know this is something they should feel proud of, something they can hang their hat on.”

The spring convention’s Pam Hamilton Keynote Address was 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, Mississippi.

Other past speakers include longtime anchor and reporter Howard Ballou of WLBT in Jackson, award-winning author Kiese Laymon, Mississippi Today’s Marshall Ramsey, and Lori Oglesbee-Petter, a nationally recognized newspaper and yearbook adviser who serves as an advocate for First Amendment rights.

At the convention, the MSPA awards student work in over 100 categories, including statewide publications of the year, Mississippi High School Journalist of the Year, the Orley Hood Award for Excellence in Sports Journalism and other portfolio-based All-Mississippi recognitions. Between the fall and spring conventions, more than 1,000 individual pieces of work were submitted for consideration.

“The awards are really what the kids get most excited about,” Morgan said. “There’s nothing more rewarding than working extremely hard behind the scenes on designing a yearbook, shooting a killer football hype video or chasing a juicy news story and then having your audience absolutely love it. But then to get recognized for that work at the state level? It just positively reinforces the skills they’ve learned and justifies a lot of long nights in the editing room.”

Will Norton, dean of the UM School of Journalism and New Media, holds the MSPA’s work in high regard.

“One of the overarching goals of the University of Mississippi is extending excellence to the state’s communities through the programs we sponsor. The MSPA is the cream of the crop in this capacity, truly the best of the best,” said Norton. “I am truly proud of the work MSPA leaders are doing, investing in the youth of our state.”

The MSPA Endowment accepts gifts from individuals and organizations. To contribute, mail a check to the University of Mississippi Foundation, with the endowment’s name in the memo line, to 406 University Ave., Oxford, MS 38655; or online at https://give.olemiss.edu.

To support the School of Journalism and New Media, contact Nikki Neely Davis, executive director of development, at 662-915-6678 or nlneely@olemiss.edu.

This story was written by Bill Dabney and Justin Whitmore and first appeared on the University of Mississippi Foundation website.

University hosts annual MSPA convention for student publishers

Posted on: March 28th, 2019 by ldrucker

Hundreds of Mississippi’s aspiring writers, publishers and journalists visited Oxford in April for the 72nd Mississippi Scholastic Press Association Convention hosted by the University of Mississippi.

Students from high schools across the state came 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 announced 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 was 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 was 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.

“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 discussed his work with the “Fannie Lou Hamer’s America” documentary team in a separate event in the Overby Center Auditorium.

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.

This article was written by Justin Whitmore of University Communications.

Correa to discuss work with Fannie Lou Hamer’s America documentary team April 1

Posted on: March 26th, 2019 by ldrucker

The University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media will host the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association high school journalism convention Monday, April 1. About 500 high school students are expected to attend.

The school will also have a special guest that day. The school’s Common Ground Committee has partnered with the MSPA to bring Pablo Correa, Ph.D., to campus to discuss his work with the Fannie Lou Hamer’s America documentary team. This presentation will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the Overby Auditorium on April 1.

Farley Hall. Photo by Clay Patrick.

Fannie Lou Hamer’s America is a multimodal project, based on the civil rights activist’s life, that includes an original documentary, an educational curriculum, a young filmmakers’ workshop, and an interactive website. The project’s mission is to create a platform for Hamer’s voice in our modern time while addressing and promoting conversations about racial equity. This presentation will discuss the documentary, last summer’s workshop, as well as the longer-range vision of the project.

Correa received his doctorate from Florida State University and specializes in digital media and documentary film. He currently teaches in the Civic Communication and Media department at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon.

Correa’s research focuses on the interests of minorities, especially Blacks and Hispanics in America. His work highlights racial relations, stories of tension, as well as stories of perseverance and success.

He assisted in teaching a youth filmmaking class at the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi, and is the photographer/videographer for the Emmett Till Memory Project.

Correa is currently working on the Fannie Lou Hamer’s America team, which will be releasing a documentary production along with a K-12 curriculum celebrating the life of Fannie Lou Hamer, one of Mississippi’s biggest civil rights icons.

‘Black Panther’ writer Jesse Holland to speak tomorrow at MSPA Convention

Posted on: January 26th, 2018 by ldrucker

The author of Marvel Comics’ graphic novel reboot “Black Panther” will encourage high school students from around the state as the keynote speaker for the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association’s 2018 spring convention and awards ceremony.

High school student journalists from around Mississippi will have a chance to advance their skills and hear from “Black Panther” graphic novel writer Jesse Holland Jr. during the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association’s annual spring conference being held at the University of Mississippi Oxford campus March 27.

.PDF OF CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

Over 500 students representing their school newspaper, television program, yearbook, literary magazine, and social media outlets will also have the opportunity to compete in the “Best of Mississippi” awards and hear from professionals in their respective fields.

Jesse Holland, Jr., the author and University of Mississippi School of Journalism alumnus, returns to his alma mater to headline the event being held on the Oxford campus on Tuesday, March 27.

“Jesse is a guy who not too long ago was sitting right where these students are, and now he’s a part of something big,” MSPA Director and UM Journalism faculty member R. J. Morgan said. “He’s someone with a broad range of skills who has honed his craft and found a sweet spot.”

UM alumnus Jesse Holland Jr. has written a novel for Marvel to reintroduce its 1960s superhero ‘Black Panther,’ the main character in a new blockbuster film.

A native of Holly Springs, Holland is an award-winning journalist himself who earned his bachelor’s degree from UM in 1992 before going on to write for the Associated Press. Last year his non-fiction book “The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slavery in the White House” won the silver medal in U.S. History at the Independent Publisher Book Awards.

“It’s exciting to give high school journalists access to someone who’s so in demand in his career right now,” Morgan said.

Now in its 71st year, the annual MSPA convention is the largest gathering of high school journalists in the state. The association works to equip area high school students to research, write, and share true stories through journalism.

Professional journalists, photographers, videographers, and educators from across the southeast will be training students in a variety of skill and roundtable sessions slated for the day’s event. Students also find out who the coveted “Best of Mississippi” award winners will be for 2018.

“Attending MSPA as a sophomore confirmed my decision to pursue a career in graphic design,” Tupelo High School Senior Sawyer Tucker said. “The classes offer a variety of learning opportunities for me and my classmates to better ourselves and our publication. The competition aspect provides an environment that makes us strive to do our best work all year long.”

Tupelo High School Sports Information Director and Student Media Adviser Braden Bishop said that since most of his students love social media, taking those skills and honing them into a journalistic approach is something students are finding both exciting and challenging.

“The MSPA classes are hands-on and interactive,” Bishop said. “As an adviser, I enjoy talking to my staff in the days following the event. They bring back great new ideas that we can implement.”

Director of Communications at St. Joseph Catholic School in Madison, Terry Cassreino, recently said that he felt participation in student media gave his students an edge in both college and career preparation.

“Regardless of what mediums students ultimately study in college, they will leave a strong high school media program with the skills they need to be successful college students and productive adults.”

Research conducted by Jack Dvork, a professor at Indiana University’s School of Journalism compared academic achievements and scores on the ACT college entrance exams of students who were on the staffs of high school newspapers and yearbooks with those who did not have those journalism experiences.

His research found that almost 20 percent of students involved in student media achieved higher grade point averages in high school, scored better on the ACT, and demonstrated better writing and grammar skills in college than students who did not have those journalism experiences.

“The skills learned through student journalism are essential tools that are transferrable to any career,” Morgan said. “Learning how to organize your thoughts, meet deadlines, and communicate effectively in verbal and written communication is key, no matter what field a student may pursue.”

For more information on the 2018 Mississippi Scholastic Press Association spring convention at UM please visit outreach.olemiss.edu/mspa2018.

By Pam Starling

Mississippi Scholastic Press Association State Convention set for March 31 at UM

Posted on: March 19th, 2017 by ldrucker

High school journalism students are among the smartest students in their schools. They are the creatives, intellectuals and critical thinkers. They question everything around them, and high school journalism teaches them life skills that are transferrable to any other career.

R.J. Morgan, left.

That’s why R.J. Morgan, Mississippi Scholastic Press Association director, is passionate about his job and the MSPA State Convention set for Friday, March 31, on the University of Mississippi campus.

UM will soon welcome 500-600 high school students. The convention will be held in Farley Hall with breakout sessions in Lamar, Yerby and Brevard Halls. The event will begin with breakfast and registration in the Grove from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. and an opening welcome. Students will attend three breakout sessions at 9:30 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. They will break for lunch in the Grove at 12:15 p.m., and the afternoon events will begin at 1 p.m. in the Ford Center with the keynote speaker and awards program. The deadline to register is March 20.

The keynote speaker is essayist and Jackson native Kiese Laymon, who attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University before graduating from Oberlin College, a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio. He earned a master’s degree in fine arts in fiction from Indiana University and is now a professor of English and African American studies at the University of Mississippi.

Laymon is author of the novel Long Division and a collection of essays called How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, the UK edition released in 2016. He has written essays, stories and reviews for numerous publications including Esquire, ESPN the Magazine, Colorlines, NPR, LitHub, The Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, PEN Journal, Oxford American, The Best American Series, Ebony and Guernica, according to his bio at kieselaymon.com. He has two books in the works, including a memoir called Heavy and a novel called And So On, expected in 2017 from Scribner.

“He’s a native Mississippian, who has gone on to be a highly respected and published voice,” Morgan said. “He’s so nuanced and really does a good job of articulating a point of view. That’s what I think he’s going to talk about. He was a high school journalist. When we can, we like to find people who were high school journalists.”

Morgan said the MSPA includes about 80 high school member publications. Web only is a small part. Most are newspapers, yearbooks or broadcasts. He said high school journalism teaches students how to organize their thoughts and express them clearly and concisely. It teaches them how to communicate, talk to their peers and strangers, and interview someone.

“It teaches them the importance of deadlines, the importance of design, and the way you structure things for maximum utility,” Morgan said. “High school journalism teaches them to question society, to look at things around them, and to look at what is being presented to them on the surface and critique it, whether that is their school policy on dress code or whether that is a bigger community issue.”

Oxford High School recently published a story about homelessness in Oxford. The student journalists identified and interviewed 93 members of their school district who are homeless in Oxford, Morgan said.

“Now there are groups and community organizations that are donating and trying to help those people,” he said, “and so it’s an extremely valuable learning experience that those kids take with them.

“To use education terminology, high school journalism is a really good exercise in the project-based learning theory. You give students an outlet, whether that is tomorrow’s broadcast or next week’s newspaper. You teach them the base skills that are required of that, and then you let them innovate, develop and create their own process to get from point A to point B, and that type of learning is really advanced and really challenges them as individuals.”

MSPA is the high school journalism organization in Mississippi. The association works with high school staffs all across the state in four areas – school newspapers, including online-only publications, print publications and news magazines; yearbooks, which almost every school has; broadcasts, which have doubled in the last two years; and awards and sessions for literary magazines for creative writing students.

“Our state convention offers skills workshops and education to help students better serve the communities in which they live and work,” Morgan said. “We also run a number of contests to honor and validate people in those four areas.”

The convention always offers basic interviewing, newswriting skills and yearbook design sessions. This year, they’ll also hold sessions on press rights and censorship in schools.

“We’re going to do a session on the current climate around media in our country, and the way we’ve been labeled, and how students can go about dealing with that,” Morgan said. “We have several different specialty sessions I’m excited about.”

Robby Donoho, a sports anchor from WCBI in Columbus, will lead several sessions.

“We really try to gather speakers in the industry and those who are teachers of journalism from across the state and beyond,” Morgan said. “I have a photographer coming from Forsyth County News in Atlanta. He is a photographer and also a content director for the non-daily newspaper, and student publications are essentially non-dailies. They might publish once a month if they are lucky. Usually, it’s more like twice or three times a semester, and so I think having the ability to hear some professional non-daily workflow information will be really neat.”

Morgan said they also try to bring in marketing speakers because the University of Mississippi has an integrated marketing communications program. They try to teach students how to market their publications and better develop their brand identity.

When MSPA started in 1947, Morgan said the convention was similar to a camp. The role of school publications has changed a lot in the past 70 years, and the convention has been a one-day event since the 1970s.

“We are one of the older scholastic press associations and one of the best attended scholastic press associations in the country,” said Morgan. This is his fourth year to direct the convention, and he said students teach him more than he teaches them regarding language evolution and technology.

“This generation – they are really innovative storytellers,” he said. “I don’t think they necessarily see themselves that way, but the way they communicate with themselves and their peers through social media and print – through broadcast, shorthand, longform – there are so many different ways they can communicate and get information to their audience. They really just amaze me.”

Morgan’s goal for every conference is to give students seeds of knowledge in new areas.

“When they get back to their schools,” he said, “it is then up to them, their communities and their teachers to foster the growth of those seeds, to the extent that we, in five and six hours, can open their mind to a new way of doing things, a better or more professional way of handling themselves, covering an event or telling a story.”

Morgan said he hopes the MPSA is a factor in the Meek School of Journalism and New Media’s growing enrollment. It is one of the fastest growing programs at UM.

“Anytime you can get 500 of the best and brightest high school students from the state on your campus, and on a campus as beautiful as this, they can’t help but take something away from it,” Morgan said. “Anytime you can get them in a facility interacting with professors that are as engaging and as interactive as ours, I don’t see how that doesn’t spark their attention.”

Morgan said the MSPA is not a recruiting arm, and they do not try to indoctrinate students about UM. They are a statewide organization focused on developing high school journalists.

“But a rising tide lifts all boats, and you can see the quality of students coming to Ole Miss begin to rise,” said Morgan who believes high school journalism is an important part of education in a media-saturated world.

“I talk to high school administrators all the time who have cut the school newspaper, or who have cut the journalism program from the school because there’s so much pressure at that level for state testing and core curriculum, etc.,” he said. “I had a school administrator tell me one time, ‘Yeah. We don’t do a school newspaper anymore because nobody reads those. Newspapers are kind of a dying thing.’

“And after I calmed down, I challenged his point of view, and I said, “So your position is that a student living in 2017 needs to know less about how media works and media literacy than they did in 1985? We are such a media society now. We are over-saturated with media, stimuli everywhere you look – on our phones, on our television screens, 24 hour news, Twitter, the barrage of bits of information that are coming to us all the time. So by teaching students journalism skills, by teaching them to be better thinkers, it also teaches them to be media consumers.”

If you plan on attending the convention or following it, the event hashtag is #MSPA17.

Contact R. J. Morgan for more information at morgan@olemiss.edu or 662-915-7146.

Story by LaReeca Rucker, adjunct journalism instructor