On March 24, the Trail staff attended the 2025 Georgia Scholastic Press Association (GSPA) Spring Convention in Athens, Georgia. At the convention, journalism students went to three workshops of their choosing to learn about ethics and ai, leadership, covering protests and more. This was Trail News Editor Nyla Kerr’s second GSPA spring convention.
“I really enjoyed the sessions from GSPA and I feel like I learned a lot. My favorite was ‘Managing your Personal Brand and Wellbeing as a Journalist’ because it gave me helpful online resources. I also really enjoyed just listening to the stories of both of the presenters because they were both so inspiring and entertaining,” she said.
The Trail Editorial Board attended the editor’s roundtable at the conference and were able to bring up some problems they face in an editor position as well as share solutions to these problems.
“It was nice to hear the other experiences of other editors who might be going through the same hardships,” junior CJ Boxhill, a member of the Trail’s Team Multimedia, said.
The staff attended a luncheon where they listened to speakers, and watched the awards ceremony, based on stories, photography and packages from this school year.
“At least fifty [awards were submitted] and I think it took a good four hours [to submit them.] I remember we were sitting there at Starbucks and we spent quite a bit of time just going through everything and filling out each individual form,” Kerr said.
All Georgia
Rhyan Murphy: Health/Medical Reporting You can read it here.
Yasemin Kalpacki: Critical Review Read it here.
Nyla Kerr, Gabriel Adams, Ellie Shelton, Ashlee Lefever, Lily Johnson, Rhyan Murphy, CJ Boxhill, Grace Lovejoy, Allie Hartman, Cari Heinonen: House Editorial This piece also earned the staff a Best of SNO national award. Read it here.
Superior
Yasemin Kalpacki: Health/Medical Reporting. Read it here.
Staff: Environmental Reporting. Read it here.
Jozlynn Smith: Feature Profile. Read it here.
August Moss: Op-ed/Commentary. Read it here.
Cari Heinonen: Sports Feature Story. Read it here.
Rhyan Murphy: Illustration. Read it here.
Betty Jane Plitt and Jayden Wadlington: Social Media Breaking News. See the post here.
Rebekah Bushmire: News Package. Watch it here.
Ryan LeVan: Sports Package. Watch it here.
Maddie Hines: Podcast. Listen to it here.
The Trail Staff also received an overall superior rating for their news site.
Kerr hopes to leave the Trail staff with motivation.
“I am very proud of having contributed to these award-winning stories. For the staff and publication next year, I am feeling pumped. Next year will be my last year on staff and I really would like to go out with a bang, so I am going to continue producing quality content and encouraging my fellow staffers to do the same,” Kerr said.
