In April 2026, Benilde–St. Margaret’s journalism students, along with a few students from the BSM yearbook, attended and presented at the Journalism Education Association (JEA)/National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA) National High School Journalism Convention. The convention was held in Minneapolis, MN, this year and rotates around the United States every year. With the convention being held locally this year, students took this opportunity to improve their media skills. There is a local Minnesota convention held every fall, but this was a unique opportunity because students were able to gain a vast amount of knowledge and perspectives from a larger group of people who shared new ideas to help people diversify their own school newspapers.
The focus of this trip was to improve BSM student media. Junior Evie Janis, an editor of the BSM Knight Errant, attended the trip to improve her journalism and editing skills by learning from students around the country. “The purpose was to bring people from journalism classes, mostly editing classes from around the country, and grow editing skills, and get new ideas,” Janis said.
The event focused on workshops, breakout sessions, and presentations. The topics of these events focused on writing, editing, photography, and design, as well as storytelling and leadership skills. Students sit in on panels led by advisers and top journalists from schools around the country. This gives students the chance to network with other students from schools farther away than they would normally be able to. The JEA/NSPA conventions are considered the biggest student journalism events in the country. “This convention is not typically held in Minnesota; you’d usually have to take a plane to attend. We were lucky that this year it was held in Minnesota; it was a great opportunity for us to be there, because normally we would never go,” Janis said.
Yearbook students who attended spent their time improving creativity, page design, and staff leadership. They looked at how bigger schools with bigger budgets and with more people contributing designed theirs. The goal here was to identify better page layouts to inspire new designs for future pages in the BSM yearbook. Similar to the Knight Errant editors, they also worked on their leadership skills and attended workshops, listening to how they could improve the environment in which they work. “We’re also looking at dynamics with how we can bring staff and new people into feeling more comfortable with the editors,” Mielke said.
One of the biggest takeaways from the conventions was multimedia storytelling. Students learned how using short videos, interviews, and combined perspectives can further enhance storytelling by presenting it in unique ways. Students also said they learned a lot about giving feedback to writers and that building connections is very important for producing the best work possible. Both groups returned from the event with many ideas to improve future student journalism at BSM. “We thought multimedia pieces would be something really cool to bring to BSM, because we don’t do that many multimedia pieces, and we think it’s something that would be really important to encourage writers to incorporate,” Janis said.