Roseburg High School

The Mass Media classes took a field trip on Wednesday, February 25, 2026. This field trip was for Spring Media Day which is held by University of Oregon, Portland in, you guessed it, Portland! So up and early at 5:30 a.m. everyone boards the bus on the grand adventure. Our first stop is McDonald’s: they sadly didn’t open doors until 6 a.m., but they do 24/7 drive throughs. Now of course, the bus doesn’t fit in a drive through so we all huddled together and ordered on the phone. Kaboom, we get our food but the time we spent here at McDonald’s made us LATE! But that's for later. Back on the bus, it was pretty boring. I put on some tunes and had my hotcakes. Once we got to Portland, it felt like a whole different world: super big buildings and crazy architecture and a bit of traffic along the way. When we got to the actual university we missed our first session. I was a bit sad, but with three whole sessions still in my grasp I pursued forward with Amelia Soloko tagging along.

Onto the first session I attended, Tom Henderson’s “Dealing With Blowback.” Tom spoke about how to deal with pushback on the things you write, because not everyone is going to respond with respect to journalistic content. Tom has been in journalism for 47 years and has been around for almost half of all the media days hosted by the University of Oregon, of which there have been 100, meaning this was the 100th anniversary of Media Day. The session itself had a very nice vibe. It was a big open room with a projector but Tom had no slideshow to present or anything. It was just him talking and then opening the room for others to talk. I learned a lot of crazy stories from him, such as getting spit on, having a knife halfway through his leg, and almost getting shot! A big reason for this is because he runs a social justice local journalist paper called “Street Roots.” What this all means is that the paper discusses local issues in Oregon and speaks on topics such as racism and homelessness. Journalists in general have been seen as an enemy for a lot of communities as well, leading to Tom being threatened just for being in the area. When dealing with pushback, Tom suggested a few things to help: people are going to be mad at the things you wrote and might send you an angry email, but usually just ignoring these is the best bet, especially when the email isn’t properly structured and isn’t actually trying to give constructive feedback.

Tom has had people yell and be angry right up to his face and say harsh phrases such as people wishing his children were brought to child protective services and harsh words being spoken about his family. During these moments, it can easily lead to someone getting angry. Tom said that people aren’t actually mad at you, they're mad at what you wrote. These horrible comments towards you and your family and friends are just people using whatever verbal weapons they have at the moment. Staying calm at that time is the best you can do, sort of acting like a tough guy.

It isn’t all about being the tough guy and pretending things don’t work, though. Situations like being spit on and being verbally abused do hurt and are traumatizing; having a good support group such as family and fellow colleagues is what really gets you through those moments. 

After the wonderful session by Tom Henderson it was time for lunch. It was pizza time, and I had three whole slices of pepperoni pizza with olives. It was fun, but I marched on to the next session, but we still had a little time left so we sat in the general area of where the next session would be. We met a student at the school that came down and sat with us, so all of us had a nice conversation in between the sessions. She is studying virtual reality and AR technology. She talked about being disappointed about Meta (Facebook) shutting down support for their VR headset Called the Meta Quest 3. I told her about a few other companies making their own VR headsets. She brought up a project that was a VR game design for older people in mind that mimicked the world we live in today. After a bit of talk around this she was actually going to let us into the studio Portland uses. Sadly the studio was shut down, but she mentioned some fun facts about it. There was a digital green screen, basically a bunch of screens that can display whatever you want behind you. The audio room is underground, causing it to be completely soundproof so podcasts sound crystal clear. 

Now it was about time for our next session, Amanda Carlton’s “Managing A Newsroom.” This session was kind of the opposite of what Tom’s was. There was a video we watched on the big projector that described all the roles in a news room; it's a lot of information so I’ll just give the basics on each role for simplicity’s sake. You first have the publisher, they are the ones keeping the lights on and controlling the budget. The editorial staff are the brains of the room, they juggle deadlines and have multiple sections within the editorial staff. Safe guards manage quality control, the editor in chief makes the final call, the in-house manager is the day-to-day chief that keeps everyone on track, and the section editor looks over each news area and assigns people what articles to work on. Moving on from the editorial staff, you have proofreaders that give the article one last look before it goes onto mass printing. Reporters are the beating hearts and get all the news; some have their own beats such as a reporter mainly covering sports, while others go for anything they can get their hands on. You have wonderful photographers who capture the moment when words aren’t enough. Sales are also a very important part of a news room because they are the ones who keep the money rolling and keep the news room financially stable. After the video, it was mainly a questionnaire about what areas you might have been confused on or want to know more about. The thing I found most interesting was the fact that Amanda was a teacher in a school with only about 150 students. 

The next session was actually in the very same room so me and Amelia went to the front for the big show. DJ KRAKENN otherwise known as Glenn Krake, otherwise known as the president of the OJEA (Oregon Journalism Education Association). His session was “TRIVIA NIGHT! - JOURNALISM QUIZ BOWL.” This session is based on a trivia tradition done for journalists around the world that DJ Krakenn wanted to bring over to both Spring and Fall Media Days. Amelia and I had to tackle these subjects: Journalism Terms, Design, Photography, Press Law, US History, Current Events, and General Trivia. Although we ran into a problem: there needs to be three people for each team! Oh no, me and Amelia wouldn’t be able to play. I took the initiative to find us a third member and wouldn’t you know, this third member, their name was Corinee, they were a student of Mr. Krakenn himself. With our team in hand we marched on through and were lost at the practice problems. It was 10 high school yearbook photos of different celebrities that you had to write the name of, like Jimmy Fallon or Justin Bieber. Besides getting a few we were stumped and did not even finish by the time the clock ran out. Good thing it was just some practice… onto the real deal we went. A team name needed to be decided so I yet again took the initiative and I named us “Wombo Combo, That Ain’t Falco.” I won’t lie though, the questions weren’t much easier. As a team we felt stumped, but that didn’t matter much, at least to me. I am not good at trivia and wasn’t expecting to win. It was a really fun atmosphere and the room had more people than expected as well. Sadly, this meant we couldn’t even finish the trivia night, only getting around halfway through the questions. As the day ended we arrived back to the main area with the rest of the news team.

Overall I’d say this experience was just as good as Fall Media Day and I’d love to do this again. I arrived home at 6:30 p.m. exhausted, but happy about my day.