Taylor Misner and Bretlie Hyde

Writers

The MHS exPRESS staff attended Spring Media Monday at Oklahoma University on Monday, April 10.

Spring Media Monday is a conference that brings journalism students from across the state to gather and attend media workshops, seminars and lectures taught by professionals and professors.

Schools must be members of OSM in order to enter monthly and On-Deadline contests, both of which work toward the state competition.

On-Deadline is a contest where students receive a list of random topics and are given a week to write the article. 

For some schools, this may not be the way things usually work, but it is never a problem for the exPRESS staff, since they are the only Oklahoma school newspaper that publishes weekly.

Monthly contests, also known as “Previously Published,” are also awarded at Spring Media Monday.

Monthly contests give students the opportunity to submit work from their school’s newspaper for feedback from media professionals.

There are a variety of categories that work can be submitted to, such as, Magazine Category, Newspaper Category, Online Category, Video/Audio/Broadcast Category and Yearbook Category. 

In each category there are different subcategories to choose from.  Each subcategory has a different topic to divide the many types of stories within that category.

For instance, Marlow submits into the Newspaper Category, which has different subcategories of Photo, Writing, Design, Art and Advertising. 

On-Deadline works differently, as the topics are assigned, but everybody writes about their own interpretation of the same subject. 

Members of the exPRESS staff did not go home empty handed after the award ceremony, as many walked away with individual awards, including six State Champion awards and six State Runner-up awards.  The MHS exPRESS also received Highest Honors as an overall publication and an All-Oklahoma award for the paper itself.  

Also, one of the most prestigious awards given at Spring Media Monday is Editor of the Year, and this year’s award was given to MHS sophomore Aidan Duke. 

Staff members are very proud of their accomplishments and look forward to continuing to bring school news to the community.