Last week, fifteen SCH Campus Lantern journalists departed from St. Martin’s Station to attend the three-day National High School Journalism Conference at the Marriott in Center City. They, along with over 3700 students from across the country, attended workshops and lectures led by journalism professionals and engaged with other student journalists.

While attending the conference, the SCH students learned from specialists and advisors of successful and award-winning student publications about various aspects of journalism. With The Campus Lantern only being created last fall by Griffy Whitman, the information that those professionals offered was invaluable for the paper’s growth and success. 

Hundreds of sessions were offered that covered a wide range of topics, including interviewing, editorial leadership, broadcasting, and every other aspect of journalism, which could grow the strength of the writers. 

For example, junior Roman Bostick attended “Turning Strong Writing into Strong Journalism.” He remarked about how eye-opening this session was: “What I learned is you have to separate your journalistic writing from your English writing. We’ve just been trained to write English papers and essays for so long, that’s how we write, but you’ve got to figure out how to write like a journalist and not like an AP Lang student.”

“The people who went to the conference mostly went to workshops that are going to help The Campus Lantern evolve,” said freshmen attendee Gray David. What they learned, like how to improve their skills or parts of the publication, would be “a great help” for the future of the paper. 

After attending the workshops centered around writers’ and the publication’s improvement, Campus Lantern advisor Ms. Gellhorn believes that “We know now what we need to do to be successful. We have an organizational chart, calendars, and I think the whole process of running The Campus Lantern is just going to be a lot smoother.” 

With greater efficiency, The Lantern will be able to produce more articles, incorporate a wider range of student voices, and grow in value to the community.

I think our students are beginning to understand how important scholastic journalism is,” she said. “Journalism’s purpose is to inform and that needs to start with our immediate community. Our school is full of incredible writers, and this is one way to do that, one way to bring people together.”