Communications students take on New York City

Students from the communications department are taking full advantage of their last semester at Saint Rose, with a recent trip to the 2024 College Media Association conference in New York City. 

The students ventured to the city for a four day trip consisting of informational sessions, ranging anywhere from resume formatting to investigative journalism, with many more options to choose from. This year, there were over 700 attendees representing colleges from all over the country. Eight of them proudly represented the communications department at Saint Rose. 

Students from the department attended the annual conference last year as well, which was an idea that came from faculty member and advisor, Shawn McIntosh. McIntosh attended the conference for the first time when he was an undergraduate journalism student himself. Later on, he took a group of students from MCLA in 2017 when he was a professor there, so he took it upon himself to introduce it to Saint Rose for the first time last year. 

“I thought it was a great opportunity for the staff to learn about journalistic practices and also bond as a team,” said Editor-In-Chief Abby Bravo. Bravo also attended last year’s CMA conference. “The experience was extremely informative, I learned about different privacy rights, and different journalism ethics to help better my work,” said Emma Tuey, photo editor and first time attendee of the conference. She attended many sessions at the conference including “Four elements of good photography”, “Creating content like a pro”, and a very humorous session about critiquing and redesigning student newspapers. María Rivera, also a communications student, attended sections such as “Silent sources”, “Food for thought”, and “Finding your broadcasting voice,” highlighting how there was a variety of different topics you could learn about. 

There were four staff members on the Chronicle accompanied by their advisor, McIntosh, conducting a panel titled “Covering Campus When School is Closing,” The student panel members were communications majors Abby Bravo ‘24 and Savannah Torebka ‘24, along with Mia Quick ‘25 and Amir Galban ‘25, who are also in the department.  This panel offered conference attendees a unique information session on media coverage and how to handle this scenario from a journalistic perspective, creating awareness of a trend of private colleges shutting down across the country, due to funding. 

The Saint Rose students in attendance also became very involved in the conference, with some making their way up the event’s leaderboard and gaining points. Photo editor for the Chronicle, Emma Tuey, placed second out of 752 attendees. Opinions editor Amir Galban also ranked high on the leaderboard, coming in fourth place overall. 

The students were definitely able to maximize their experience at the conference presenting their own panel, learning valuable career information, and creating a unique bonding experience as a department. “Overall I believe it was a great trip as the semester is coming to an end,” said Tuey. “For all of the journalists to be together, learn together and bond together.”