The Feather staffers woke up bright and early (April 26) on the third day of their trip to San Francisco, meeting at the hotel Starbucks around 7:30 a.m., where they enjoyed coffee and different breakfast pastries. They discussed the day?s schedule and journalism adviser Greg Stobbe gave the students the tickets they needed to get into their competitions later that day.

Callista Fries, ’15, Mckay Mohun, ’13, and Ryan King, ’15, then left for their Online News Package Competition at 8 a.m. In this competition, they were given an assignment to create “a comprehensive news online package” that featured “a main story, photos, video and/or audio and at least one additional layer of coverage.” The topic of their assignment was social media at the journalism convention. The three students were given the day to work on their package; their completed assignment was to be uploaded between 3:30 p.m. and 5 p.m.

The rest of Feather staffers attended their first workshops at 9 a.m., with most of the staff choosing to attend a session on Twitter, titled “A (student) journalist?s guide to Twitter.” Twitter Editorial Director Karen Wickre talked about the benefits of Twitter and how it has changed journalism, calling it “a powerful platform for journalism.”

While most of the staff attended the session on Twitter, junior Rayna Endicott decided to attend a session on photography titled, “Photography: from ordinary to extraordinary,” to increase her knowledge of photography. In this session, Judy Babb from Friesens Yearbooks gave advice on how to make pictures better by getting the correct angles and looking at different perspectives. She encouraged students to always keep their cameras with them so that they never miss an opportunity to take a photo.

At 10 a.m. the Feather staffers proceeded to attend the session, “Pushing the envelope in Web journalism,” where students listened to a panel of student editors from five different high school newspapers, including The Feather Online?s Editor-in-Chief, Tynin Fries. Editors from Knight Errant, Wayland Student Press Network (WSPN), Bearing News and El Estoque made up the rest of the panel. They discussed different ways to write editorials and handle controversial news topics. The editors for papers with both online and print also talked about how they decide which articles to publish in their print newspapers versus online.

The staffers attended their third and final session, “12 apps you need to have,” at 11 a.m. At this session Tracy Anne Sena from Convent of the Sacred Heart High School discussed iPhone and iPad apps that were helpful for journalists. Some of these apps included Tweetdeck, Propublica, DMD Panorama, Ustream, Google Drive and Dragon Dictation.

After attending three sessions, the staff was hungry so they headed to the food court in the Westfield San Francisco Centre. The students had a variety of food options to choose from and enjoyed their time spent together away from the convention. After lunch, some of the staffers stayed at the mall to shop while others headed back to the hotel to work. They spent most of the afternoon writing and editing articles and resting up before their competitions.

At 4 p.m. most of the Feather staffers competed in different categories of write-off competitions, where they were given some sort of assignment to finish in two hours. After that they walked to dinner together, where they enjoyed yet another meal sitting around the table laughing and enjoyed each other?s company.

Later there was a dance held at the convention that journalism students had the option of attending. The staffers turned in for the night while the editors prepared for their presentation the following morning.

For the previous day’s report, check out Seaside stories, Day 2.