To celebrate its 100th anniversary, the Columbia Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) has invited an exceptional lineup of professional journalists and scholastic media experts to speak at its annual Spring Convention and Centennial Celebration, taking place March 19–21, 2025, on the Columbia University campus in New York. The event will offer more than 240 sessions. Richard Gingras, Google strategic adviser and former global vice president of Google News, will deliver the keynote address.
The original intent of the organization remains the same: to bring together student journalists and their faculty advisers from different schools around the country to exchange ideas, support one another, and engage in shared learning in the interest of a healthy student press. Throughout its 100-year history, CSPA has engaged with student journalists and student-led publications, offering annual events, workshops, and awards programs to support and reward outstanding journalism. These events and programs continue to attract students from around the country and the world.
Columbia’s Third Journalism Initiative
CSPA traces its history back to 1924, when early gatherings of editors and staff members from secondary schools in the metropolitan New York area led to a formal convention at Columbia University. Since its official founding in 1925, CSPA is Columbia’s third journalism initiative, after the Columbia Journalism School in 1912 and the endowment of the Pulitzer Prizes in 1917. Today, CSPA is part of the Columbia Pre-College Program, which is administered by the Columbia University School of Professional Studies (SPS). Associate Dean Dr. Annette Bhatia has oversight of the Continuing Education Program, which includes the Pre-College Program, and Senior Associate Dean Dr. Erik T. Nelson heads the Academic Affairs division of the School, of which Continuing Education is a part. “Pre-College education at Columbia is wonderful academic preparation for high school students,” he said. “In addition, programs like CSPA reinforce strong critical thinking and communication skills, which are useful to develop for success in any profession.”
Columbia Scholastic Press Association convention on Columbia's Morningside campus, 1950. Photo credit: CSPA Archives
In addition to its annual education initiatives, CSPA runs major awards programs for student journalists and for scholastic journalism professionals. For students, the Crown Awards program is a nationwide head-to-head competition among school publications across three major publication types; and the Gold Circle Awards recognize individual achievement for student work across 142 categories. The National High School Journalism Teacher of the Year Award program, which is sponsored by Dow Jones News Fund, honors excellence in journalism education instruction. CSPA also confers other awards for professionals annually, in consultation with the CSPA Advisers Association (CSPAA). The awards are a good gauge for students to understand the level of work they are producing compared with that of their peers and are also a learning opportunity.
“I’m a firm believer that competition helps everyone raise their level of skill and knowledge, and so programs like the CSPA Gold Circles or the Crown Awards allow students to encourage themselves and encourage each other to get better and to do better work,” said Mark Murray, executive director for the Association of Texas Photography Instructors and chair of the technology committee of the CSPAA. “Some of the work that we see is easily on the same level as professional work.”
CSPA’s three staff members have deep roots at Columbia. Director Jennifer Bensko Ha and Associate Directors Rebecca Castillo and Antonio Rodriguez are all alums of CSPA and Columbia College. Rodriguez, who has worked for 25 years at CSPA managing day-to-day operations, jokes that it was CSPA that got him interested in applying to Columbia. Castillo has been entwined with the organization even longer: more than 30 years, first when she attended a CSPA convention, then as a student worker at Columbia College. While a full-time employee at CSPA, Castillo completed her master’s at Columbia Journalism School. She says she has stayed with CSPA because of her unwavering belief in what it stands for. “I have seen the transformation of publishing from paste-up to desktop publishing, and now reporting on mobile devices. But what has never changed are the skills that our students use,” said Castillo. “All the skills in a journalist’s toolkit can be transferred to life skills. I truly believe this, and I’m an advocate of all students giving at least one semester to their student media in school.”
Preserving a Future Free Press
Ha is a former journalist who led the online newsrooms at Newsweek and Fortune and held executive leadership roles at other media organizations, including heading online operations at WNYC, the largest public radio station in the country. She’s the fourth director of CSPA and the first woman to lead the organization. “Providing excellence in journalism education for student journalists and their advisers is directly supportive of a future free press and a healthy democracy,” said Ha. She says that because anyone with a phone can publish content, teaching solid journalism skills, media literacy, and ethics is a critical antidote to misinformation and deep fakes in an influencer-driven media landscape. “Reputable news organizations have layers of journalism professionals producing and reviewing content before publication. There’s a whole profession of editing for some very good reasons.”
Jenny Creech, a former journalist at the Houston Chronicle, The Athletic, and The New York Times and current instructor and journalism adviser at St. Mark’s School of Texas, agrees. “Journalism is so important to society,” she said. “We need to start at the beginning with people who are going to be the future of journalism and teach them how to be truth seekers and truth tellers, to find facts.” Creech, currently the president of CSPAA, was a student member of CSPA and now presents at its events and teaches at the CSPA Summer Journalism Workshop.
Students at the Columbia Scholastic Press Association convention, 1963. Photo credit: CSPA Archives
Making a Difference
Students catch on fast, and their early media fluency is a huge factor. According to Ha, student reporting is sometimes the only reliable source of local news in news deserts — communities in which local media have struggled to stay afloat. Stories uncovered by high school reporters have had an impact and in some cases — such as one paper’s exposé on systemic transphobia in a school district — have led to change. In other cases, students are eyewitnesses to horrifying news events, such as mass-casualty events and natural disasters. “High school students are covering the same stories as their professional counterparts in many cases,” added Rodriguez. “For example, gun violence is a sad reality for many of our students. We see this in their work. In 2018, students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, led by their media advisers, Sarah Lerner and Melissa Falkowski, bravely covered the shooting, memorializing in their publications their classmates and staff members the school lost in that tragedy.”
For the students themselves, being able to make a difference is often a major part of why they pursue journalism. “I want my classmates to be engaged and enjoy reading the newspaper, but I also want it to be something meaningful to them — not just a pleasant read but also something where they can get some real information that might change the way they think about the school or their beliefs,” explained Liam Olds, a student from Saint Augustine High School in San Diego who participated in the 2024 Summer Journalism Workshop. Olds added, “There’s definitely a difference between the work that my staff does and professional work, but we’re trying to use professionals as an example and building up toward that level as much as we can while still keeping it tailored and simplified.”
What’s Next
Focusing on the needs of the students is a driving force behind CSPA. It’s a self-funded organization, and those who devote their time and effort to supporting CSPA do so because they believe in its mission and what it has accomplished. “We are proud of our history. But even more than that, we are hopeful for the future that we see in the talent, determination, and energy of our student journalists,” said Ha. “That’s why we do what we do and will continue this important work, giving them the resources they need to carry on the legacy of excellence in journalism.”
