MSPA is a competition between all De Soto County schools, such as Center Hill, Tupelo and De Soto Central, which are Hernando’s biggest competition. Taking the bus from Hernando High School to the Ole Miss college campus as early as 8am. Everyone starts off with a 9:30am session moving onto the 10:30 session and then 11:30 session. These sessions consist of journalism classes such as visual branding in canva, hands-on photography, writing leads, and so much more.
Ella Clark states “‘What TV Pros Want You To Know was such a great class and gave really great feedback.”
Before they move on to the announcements they have a lunch break before the announcing the winners of this year‘s competition that begins at 1 PM. At the announcements they start off by announcing the finalist, and then the final winner, and once they’ve gotten through all the categories, they announced the single best of the best of all categories in Mississippi.
Dani Johnston explains “Competition can help newer members learn to appreciate journalism more and can help them decide if this would be the right career path for them in the future.”
After each winner is announced each school screams in excitement supporting each finalist and winner. This year‘s MSPA 26 was a complete success with many newcomers learning many new things to take into the next year.
“I’d say that competition was a fun setting with classes that many could learn from. Not only that, but it was nice to get away for a day and have a mini tour of the journalism department of the campus, especially since many of us would wanna major in journalism at Ole Miss in the future.”
Bailee Chase exclaims to us about MSPA.
Sarah Austin’s classes such as Yearbook, The Golden Report, Hernando Tiger Sports Network (HTSN), Eye Of The Tiger (EOT) all attend this competition. Everyone in these journalism classes attending this year‘s MSPA 26 submitted a different competition piece in hopes for a chance to win. There was different categories to submit their work such as best News Story, Feature Story, News Story, and much more. Our winner, Jaylin Hemphill, took home for the yearbook class best sports graphic, finalist for best feature story, and finalist for best opinion piece.
Jaylin Hemphill tells us “Being a freshman in high school on the Ole Miss campus and just to see like all the beautiful places and to be able to go and win awards was so amazing. With me being the only award winner and having finalist spots that really meant a lot to me and I just wanna say that I really want to thank Mrs. Austin so much for giving me the opportunity to grow in my skills. She’s been so helpful to me.”
Although before competition winners were announced all of the old returners attended different classes that taught helpful new skills to apply to their everyday journalism class. These classes taught how to improve journalism writing, new skills to interviewing, better ways to take photos, and plenty more.
“I think comp is an opportunity to look into my future as a journalist. It helps me to learn more about the state of journalism and to connect with my peers in the field.”
Corelya Webb believes about these classes.
The next day all journalism classes talk with one another about what notes they took and what new things they learned in these classes and what they want to use from these classes. Austin’s students plan to use what they learned at MSPA 26 to apply to next year‘s journalism classes to improve them more than they have been this year.
