Day 2: College Media Conference

Monday was the only full day of the convention and it was packed with exciting and informative sessions. My morning started with a session led by an editor at The Paris Review, one of the most respected and long standing literary journals in the country. They were apparently innovators of the long form interview and I made a note of the fact that they actually accept and read unsolicited manuscripts.
The Keynote speaker Monday was Terry Moran of "Nightline". Apparently Wikipedia lies about him, he did not appear in The Heartbreak Kid, his nieces and nephews posted that as a joke. Though Moran told light hearted tales of being called Terry "Moron" in a press conference and making his famous blunder on Twitter, the most poignant was the story of his experiences in Nicaragua. He challenged the young journalists to avoid the sea of noise that engulfs the media today; to resist the temptation of "the shouters, posers, mountebanks," and seek out facts about what the world is really like. I recorded part of his speech, it was probably my favorite session of the whole conference.
After that I heard Lauren Collins, a staff writer at The New Yorker who previously worked at Vogue. In the afternoon I went to hear Toni Albertson and Elena Jarvis, two music journalists that have written for Rolling Stone and a variety of other major publications, even having what sounds like Almost Famous comparable experiences back in the 80's. They offered great interview tips and educated us about intellectual property.
Though I did see some of the conference on Sunday, today really felt like the meat of everything was reached. The offerings were very colorful and the speakers more experience professionals that have been living in the journalism/media world for years.
After the sessions, some friends and I took advantage of the remaining daylight and took the subway downtown where we wandered around Soho for a while. Later, we met a friend of a friend attending Columbia University and picked up some amazing cheesecake for dessert. I'll post about the final day of the conference (today) tomorrow night. Tonight, I actually have to work on some articles for the paper.