Every year, Hofstra University holds a High School Press Day dedicated to educating high school journalists on current trends in journalism and how to work on their skills in the field. Students from Mr. Kravitz’ Journalism I and II classes were among over 200 students to attend this year’s Press Day December 12.

This year the panel discussions focused on how social media has impacted journalism and its audience, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at how Hofstra organized their live, televised coverage of the 2018 election. The panelists this year were unique as the professionals were joined by numerous Hofstra students graduating this year. The students discussed how their experience working on the televised event helped inflate their passion in journalism and lead them to pursue careers as journalists.

Following the panel discussions, during the walking tour of the campus, Mr. Kravitz’ classes made their way to the molecular biology lab where they met Mr. Kravitz’ fellow ice hockey player and biology professor, Mike Dores. Professor Dores taught a brief, engaging lesson on molecular biology, what he and his students do in the lab, and even made a clever comparison of journalism to what he studies – just as journalism is all about finding ways to communicate with a vast audience of other people, molecular biology studies the ways cells communicate with other cells.

The students were joined by two of Dores’ students, who showed them some of the specimens they performed studies on, as well as their electron microscope and some of the photos it took.

Workshops on different forms of journalism were held subsequently just as last year. The topics were navigating social media, photojournalism, investigative reporting, and sports journalism. The students separated themselves among the three workshops. I took the investigative reporting workshop taught by Sandra Peddie, who discussed the articles she wrote for Newsday on the harmful gang MS-13 and the steps she took to write them.

This year’s Press Day was a success just as last year’s was; it was very informative and culminated with a delicious lunch that was free in the Hofstra Student Union.