On October 22, the three Steinbrenner publications attended the Florida Scholastic Press Association otherwise known as FSPA at the University of South Florida’s Marshell Center. FSPA is an organization designed to introduce inspiring journalists about different ways to improve their work and gives students the opportunity to compete in different competitions against publications across the state.
While attending the event students had the opportunity to listen to different guest speakers from all over the journalism world and hear about their stories. FSPA has an opening ceremony for the students who are attending to learn about the event and hear from a keynote speaker who talks to everyone who’s attending. The keynote speaker of the event was Jackie Callaway who is a reporter for ABC news and Callaway went in to how she finds stories and how to make the stories interesting for the audience.
After hearing from the keynote speaker students headed to either complete their contests or to head to one of the three sessions that FSPA had planned for the day. [insert Yearbook/Echo quote].
After completing their contests and going to the session’s students were able to grab some lunch from the USF’s Marshell Center cafeteria which included restaurants such as Chick Fil A, Subway, Panda Express, and more. While eating the publications had time to talk to each other and learn more about each other allowing for a little bit of team bonding.
Sophomore Abigal Fay, an editor on the yearbook staff, talks about her experience at lunch, “I loved lunch at FSPA because my best friend Megan Menendez bought a F’Real milkshake. I have seen these on tik tok and have always wanted to try,” Fay said.
After lunch, students headed to their final session of the day and those sessions were all about the future career’s students can have in the journalism world. One of the sessions even took students on a tour of USF’s Zimmerman Center where the journalism major classes are taught, and students were able to investigate the building of where USF students film their daily morning show that opened for the first time since COVID-19 that same day.
Once students finished their final session they headed back to where the day started in the Oval Theatre for the closing ceremony. In the closing ceremony the awards for the contests students competed in that day were announced and the contests that earned an All Florida, which is the second highest award to win at FSPA, that students completed at the beginning of October. Steinbrenner publications took home 15 awards with yearbook taking 11 awards, the Echo taking 1 award, and the newspaper taking 3 awards.
“FSPA was a wonderful experience for all Steinbrenner students. I love that we won so many awards. We were all cheering for each other, which was funny. It was stressful sometimes, however, because I had to SPRINT to get my contest in on time. I can’t wait for their spring FSPA in Orlando,” said Fay.
Zach Babajanof // Sports Editor
