Over the course of March 5-7, the Solano Pulse staff went to San Francisco, to attend the Associated Collegiate Press National Media Conference. There, people from the field of Journalism such as former advisors, reporters, and editors spoke about their career experiences, and offered advice as former journalism students themselves.
Some session topics included a 2 ½ hour deep dive on investigative reporting, solidarity and solutions journalism, broadcasting, how to cover traumatic events on a college campus while caring for your staff, how to start your own podcast, and much more.
The first keynote session on Thursday was a panel of professional journalists, coming from backgrounds like photojournalism and editing, who spoke about covering protests. The Friday keynote speaker was the Editor and Chief of The San Francisco Chronicle, who spoke about the future of journalism and a post AI world.
On the last day of the conference, there was a protest over the US’s war against Iran across the street from the hotel where the conference was being held. Simultaneously, the city was celebrating Chinese New Year, and a troop of dancers performed the traditional Dragon Dance at the protest.
As people chanted, and some protestors clashed with counter protestors, Pulse members were on the scene, putting the methods we just learned to the test.
Overall, the experience was enlightening to all of us, editors and reporters alike, and inspired us to fervently continue building our publication and our personal careers in journalism.
