Students from The Sentinel newspaper staff and a few English classes attended the NESPA 64th Annual Conference on Friday, May 4. The conference included brief classes on different aspects of journalism. It was Pembroke’s seventh time attending the conference, held at Boston University.
     The classes offered at the conference included ‘Introduction to blogging,’ ‘Sports writing and editing,’ and ‘Feature writing.’ The instructors of these classes specialized in these specific topics or journalism in general.
     Students interested in journalism from a wide range of schools got the opportunity to go to three classes through out the day.
     Teachers also attended the classes at the conference.
     Amanda Mrowka, literary magazine adviser said, “I attended a workshop on magazine design and publishing.” Many schools shared their ideas and Mrowka got to see samples of other schools’ magazines at the conference.
     There was also a point in the day when all students listened to a speech by Jim Armstrong, who is a news reporter for WBZ-TV. He talked about his experiences in journalism and how he got to where he is today.
     After attending the NESPA conference Scott Turley, advisor for the Pembroke Sentinel decided that he wants to stop printing the newspaper and go completely online.
     Turley said, “It would be so much less expensive to publish online…mostly it is the wave of the future.” He believes that people would rather read about the school online and that it would be a lot less work and wasted paper to publish online.
     Many members of the newspaper staff disagree with the thought of The Sentinel going online, including Julia DeBenedictis.
     DeBenedictis said, “The intimacy between the reader and the paper is non-existent when you are reading it off a computer. A newspaper is isn’t a paper if it’s on a screen.”