KIPA Conference

I know I talked about my work on Transy’s newspaper a little bit at the beginning of the year. Well, I’m still going steady as Opinions Editor and regular columnist, and while I devote hours a week to the Rambler, this weekend made it all worth it!

This weekend, Transy hosted the annual Kentucky Intercollegiate Press Association (KIPA) conference, where the staff from college newspapers across the state come together to attend discussions and panels to get ideas about how to improve their papers. As I couldn’t miss class on Friday, I could only attend one session, but it was fabulous and I even came away with a story idea or two! A regular and popular columnist from the Lexington Herald Leader emphasized the importance of steeping yourself in your community to produce the best possible stories, and we had a discussion on the best strategies to go about doing it—what a great guy!

Not only did we have these discussions, we also had an awards ceremony on Saturday morning. A couple months ago, we submitted stories, and even entire issues of the Rambler to compete against those from other colleges, and the Rambler CLEANED UP! We even won first place for overall Opinion pages among all the others! It just really reminded me that our paper is truly respected by other campus newspapers across the state, and renewed my love of working with the paper, even though it adds a good deal of stress to my life on occasion. I wouldn’t give it up for the world, and if you’re at all interested in working for the Rambler when you come to Transy, I can hook you up ;)!