From the City of Angels to the City of Music: SRL’s 2025 fall events recap
Date: December 15, 2025
By: Anthony Payne
The SRL team has been flexing the frequent flyer miles throughout a markedly busy fall season. Here are the highlights from the events and workshops Student Reporting Labs has been a part of lately.
Los Angeles – The Teen Vogue Summit
This is the second year we’ve covered the Teen Vogue Summit, a full-day event featuring dynamic discussions with musicians, activists, writers, and influencers seeking to turn passion into action. Four students and two teachers from Northview High School and Daniel Pearl Magnet School represented SRL at the Summit, enjoying performances from KATSEYE and discussions led by actors like Wicked’s Marissa Bode and One Piece’s Iñaki Godoy.
Students Jasmine Thompson and Mylo Negrete interviewed content creator and designer Nava Rose about sustainable fashion practices, building a closet that reflects your personal style, and a Halloween costume that reflects your environmental ethics.
San Francisco, California – NorCal Media Day
The Journalism Education Association of Northern California’s NorCal Media Day was hosted this year at Archbishop Riordan High School. The day’s breakout sessions covered everything from how to write a feature story, to the business of selling ads, to designing captivating visual stories.
Our session covered multimedia journalism basics, how to work with SRL during the 2025-26 school year, and encouraged students to submit audio pitches for On Our Minds: Road Trip. We’re looking for place-based stories about what’s unique about your towns, cities, and neighborhoods – take us on a virtual road trip to your favorite hometown haunts!
Denver, Colorado – The National Council of Teachers of English Conference
NCTE is an annual gathering of thousands of teachers, leaders, researchers, authors, and illustrators. At SRL, we work with a lot of teachers who have limited or specialized experience; many want to teach journalism but aren’t sure where to start. The answer? StoryMaker! During our breakout session at this year’s convention, English educators in the SRL community shared their favorite StoryMaker resources, including the broadcasting burriculum roadmap, script writing toolkits, and podcasting resources. Join StoryMaker for free access to a wide array of resources, lesson plans, and connect with a national community of educators.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, joined Monarch High School student Sonya Solomon for an interview about sustainable living, reciprocity, and what home means to her. Check out that interview in the sixth season of On Our Minds, coming spring 2026, which will take audiences on a tour of the wackiness and wisdom found in all corners of the country.
Boulder, Colorado – CU Boulder J Day
The University of Colorado Boulder’s annual J-Day invites high school students to campus for a showcase of journalism opportunities and a glimpse into university life. SRL’s Senior Manager of Community Engagement Emily Dobkin and Youth Media Producer Becky Wandel gave an overview session of the hands-on experiences that Student Reporting Labs has to offer, and led a storyboarding activity to practice developing the elements of a strong story.
Austin, Texas – Best Buy’s Teen Tech Center
SRL’s Audio Producer Wyatt Mayes went down to Austin for a hands-on audio storytelling workshop at Best Buy’s Teen Tech Center. Gil Garcia, SRL’s Southern-region Teacher Ambassador, joined Wyatt to instruct both students and adults seeking to learn the basics of podcast production, using the equipment they already had on-hand. Along with the technical skills, attendees learned techniques to get a good interview and build a script that lends itself to a good story. On day two of the workshop, attendees recorded their own audio segments and shared stories from their communities.
Washington D.C. – MediaFest25
Though SRL is primarily a high school program, there’s plenty of avenues for college students to get involved. At SRL’s first presentation at the College Media Association’s national convention in DC, we gave an overview of past content projects and future opportunities available to college students, including Second Nature, Run, Hide, Fight, and segment producers for the upcoming season of On 
Our Minds.
College climate reporting fellow Zion Williams, Academy fellow Pride David, and SRL Intern Vivien Williams also shared their experience working with SRL as college students, and answered questions about the journalism industry and building careers while still in the classroom. The session wrapped with a discussion on the state of press freedoms on campuses; students from universities all over the country voiced their experiences with censorship in the wake of DEI rollbacks and university administrations pressuring for favorable coverage.
If you’re facing censorship from your school administration, make sure you know your rights, and if you’re looking for alternative routes to publish a piece, consider SRL as a platform for publication.
Nashville, Tennessee – Journalism Education Association National Conference
In November, SRL headed to Music City for this three-day gathering of high school journalists. The weekend’s itinerary sported breakout sessions led by industry professionals, universities, students, teachers, and more. Journalism students and advisors in attendance might have caught us tabling in the Expo Hall, handing out SRL swag, and encouraging passersby to join our newsletter to keep up to date with all the free resources we offer teachers and students.
Our breakout session was all about pitching. After going through guidelines and examples, students pitched and workshopped their ideas live in the room. The best pitches are timely, feature strong characters, and above all, communicate why the story’s interesting to you as a producer. You can check out our pitching guidelines and submit a story to SRL here by March 31, 2026.
Washington D.C. – National Council for the Social Studies Annual Conference
We’re always looking for spaces to connect with teachers face-to-face and grow the Student Reporting Labs community. NCSS is a gathering of social studies teachers and education professionals, assembled with the mission of rejuvenating and inspiring new strategies to engage students and advocate for issues in education. For our last conference of the year, we joined up with PBS News Hour Classroom for a presentation on how journalism education and social studies skills go hand in hand. Media skills can contextualize historical movements and moments, and inspire students to get involved in their communities to be a part of the history being made every day.
Minneapolis, Minnesota – Minnesota High School Press Journalism Convention
SRL Central Regional Ambassador Trina Moore presented to a group of students seeking to level up their AV skills. She handed out SRL swag, met with other media educators to swap classroom strategies, and led a session on SRL’s free online resources for those seeking help teaching production skills to high school students.
Salt Lake City, Utah – Utah College Media Alliance Annual Symposium
The Utah College Media Alliance hosts a free annual symposium at Salt Lake Community College to provide basic media and journalism training to high school students and advisors. Mountains Region Ambassador Chris Sloan met a number of new teachers at this year’s event – we love to see it. Many advisers noted trying to figure out how to include more multimedia into their offerings. For example, one teacher who has been advising his school’s newspaper for 20 years is now branching out into podcasting and video – StoryMaker has a number of resources for those looking to make the same leap.
“All in all, it was a good gathering and pretty much everybody left feeling positive,” said Sloan.
We’re thankful for all the hands shaken, lessons learned, and connections made at all of this year’s events. It’s truly been another great year for Team SRL, thanks to the support of our community. If you’re seeking to connect with our team and like-minded educators, and haven’t yet joined the SRL Community Commons, this is where the SRL community is now gathering: it’s a virtual space to share wins and find support, locally and across the country. We hope to see you there in the new year!