Last week, I had the opportunity to attend Mediafest ’25, the largest annual gathering of college media and journalism students in the nation hosted by the Associated Collegiate Press, College Media Association, and the Society of Professional Journalists. This year, the conference was held in Washington D.C., and The Avion sent a delegation of students including myself, our News Editor Sam, our Business Manager Kaden, and our advisor Indira.
At the conference, we were able to receive critiques on our first issue of the semester and on our website, getting great feedback and praise from faculty from other universities on the hard work that our organization is doing. We also entered into some best of show awards, with our Photo Editor Brandon winning Ninth Place in the country for Best of Show Feature/News Photo.
We were able to attend different breakout sessions throughout the conference on many different topics including leadership, social media, copyright, writing techniques, and more. My favorite session that I attended was on strategies for building your own media career and was given by a Multi Media Journalist from Minnesota. Here, I was able to learn different strategies I can use to help build my own career in TV News after graduation.
Finally, I was also invited to a tour of the Gray Media D.C. Bureau, learning a lot by seeing the behind the scenes of an actual news room that is live almost every hour of the day. Throughout this trip, I was able to network and build relationships with other students and media professionals that will help us not only allow The Avion to flourish, but also my future career. This is one of the benefits that the smaller size of Embry-Riddle provides: the opportunity to attend important trips such as this!
Besides the conference, we had such a fun time exploring the city of Washington, D.C. Despite the government shutdown, we were able to see the entire National Mall, ride our scooters around the city, and of course get some tasty food in Chinatown and the Cheesecake Factory. This trip was a whirlwind three days from start to finish, and I am so grateful for the opportunity to attend this conference.
