{"id":10308,"date":"2018-02-15T13:11:17","date_gmt":"2018-02-15T19:11:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/?p=10308"},"modified":"2018-02-15T13:11:17","modified_gmt":"2018-02-15T19:11:17","slug":"harding-hosts-southeast-journalism-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/2018\/02\/15\/harding-hosts-southeast-journalism-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Harding Hosts Southeast Journalism Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Southeast Journalism Conference (SEJC) began today, marking the first time the conference has been held in Arkansas. Every spring semester, student publications from various universities in the southeast gather at one university campus to learn and network with fellow communication-oriented students, professors and professionals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">According to Katherine Ramirez, SEJC 2018 president, this year\u2019s conference has been two years in the making, since Harding\u2019s department of communications placed a bid for Harding to host the conference in 2016. Though he was a freshman at the time, junior Kaleb Turner agreed to be student president of SEJC if the bid was accepted. Ramirez and Turner have been planning the conference for several months alongside senior Savanna DiStefano, Vice President of SEJC. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe are happy to be able to expand our community and invite students and faculty from all over the southeast to kind of see what Harding is all about,\u201d Ramirez said. The SEJC committee decided to invite participants to attend chapel on Friday morning in order to help visitors gain insight into Harding\u2019s culture.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Historically, SEJC has been held at universities with different values those at Harding, according to Turner. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhen we initially put the bid in for us to host it, we said we\u2019re not going to shy away from the fact that we\u2019re a Christian university,\u201d Turner said. \u201cThat\u2019s who we are, and that\u2019s in our identity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The conference kicked off Thursday evening with a showing of \u201cMissing Micah,\u201d a documentary about the murder of a former Harding student, produced in part by Dr. Ginger Blackstone, associate professor of broadcast journalism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Friday morning, around 300 students will be participating in the conference and can attend breakout sessions and panels based on their areas of interest. Attendees will listen to speakers, many of whom are Harding graduates or current Harding professors, according to Turner. There will be onsite award competitions for journalism, reporting, storytelling, public relations, and online media. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhat we\u2019ve tried to do is get a mix of print journalism, broadcast journalism, radio, design, public relations, advertising, photography, just really anything that\u2019s going to be on the communications spectrum,\u201d Ramirez said. \u201cWe\u2019ve had students get internships in the past from things like this\u2026It\u2019s such an opportunity to grow in communications.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On Friday evening, many students will be awarded for previously submitted work at the Best of the South Awards banquet. The keynote speaker for the banquet is a Los Angeles Times and Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Sonia Nazario.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Participating schools are visiting from states including Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Tennessee. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The executive committee of SEJC includes junior Megan Ledbetter, breakout session coordinator, junior Ally Parrett, exhibit hall and volunteer coordinator, junior Carlie Tacker, graphic designer, junior Hannah Hitchcox, social media coordinator, and Z\u2019Ann Allison, on-site competition coordinator.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">For information and updates \u00a0from the conference, search @SEJC2018 or #SEJC2018 on Twitter or #SEJC2018 on social media.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Southeast Journalism Conference (SEJC) began today, marking the first time the conference has been held in Arkansas. Every spring semester, student publications from various universities in the southeast gather&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15089,"featured_media":10309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15089"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelink.harding.edu\/the-bison\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}