The doors close and the music starts up. Young twenty-somethings and the professors who drove them mingle around small tables with little, plastic cups of lemonade and chat to their hearts’ content. Others linger on the sidelines watching the band, of course, but keeping an eye on the crowd as well. They search for someone chatty and scout for an interesting story hidden beyond a nametag.
Sure, it’s a social event. But it’s also a competition. With one hell of a deadline.
The 2026 Southeast Journalism Conference, hosted by Georgia Highlands College, began with a mixer for college journalists to greet, meet and make connections — but many of us entered the scene with an ulterior motive, handed to us on a slip of paper on our way through the door.
Sixteen categories of on-site competition weighed on students’ minds. How will the photographers find the perfect shot under harsh fluorescent lights? What is going to spark enough interest and inspiration in the team of podcasters to create an award-winning segment? Can the feature writer crank out 1,000 words in 20 hours with a grand total of seven minutes in interviews?
The Superstation, a small cover band from Georgia, performed a setlist of well-known theme songs paired with the punk-rock atmosphere of sleek guitars, a Blink-182 sleeveless shirt and a bright red Misfits sticker popping out against the dark sound system behind them.
The show offered attending students and advisers the chance to relax and melt into the background of the night’s unorthodox entertainment. A student weaved his way through the crowd with bounce in his step as the beat played on. Groups reminisced on favorite childhood tunes as the band cried, “Go, go Power Rangers!” Reece Leddy, sports editor of the Belmont Vision, danced and headbanged along to the music, telling a new acquaintance from The Murray State News about his own punk band back home and good-naturedly bragged about the Belmont Bruins beating the Racers a week prior.
On the flip side, it delivered prime opportunities to get the photos, inspiration and 1,000 words we were looking for. Photographers and videographers darted around the stage for the perfect angle — one student even abandoned his tripod to lie flat on his back. When The Superstation’s enthusiasm sent a mic stand crashing down, he and his peers, with expensive camera equipment in hand, must have felt lucky when it fell perfectly between them and no one got hurt. Whoever snapped a good photo of it in action must have felt even luckier.
Katie Baxter, adviser to the Six Mile Post and professor of digital media and communication at Georgia Highlands College, coordinated the entire mixer, from the food to the music. She said she chose The Superstation so students in the arts and entertainment on-site competition had something fun and out of the ordinary to work with.
“I think covering something a little outside the box is a lot more fun,” Baxter said. “I always joke that the weirdos are my favorite people, and with these guys, we’ve got that bit of nostalgia, we’ve got thinking back and feeling emotions.”
For Baxter, the nostalgia of The Superstation’s performance served as a jumping-off point for student competitors to engage with this year’s theme of Southern culture and its intrinsic link to storytelling.
“We all know that person who will sit and tell us a story about when they were a kid, or places or where things used to be,” she said. “Stories make us feel things. Stories are there to make us be better people. When I think about stories, they’ve all already happened. What better way than to pull some nostalgia from childhood into telling those stories and making you feel things?”
Erin Erter (they/them), opinions editor of The Reflector at Mississippi State University, was one such arts and entertainment competitor tasked with this storytelling assignment. Erter was unable to participate in the on-site competitions in 2025 as a member of the university hosting SEJC, but this year, with a notepad and handheld tripod at the ready, they said a “new level has been unlocked” along with new anxieties.
“Last year, when I had conversations with people, I felt kind of out of their experience (and) like I couldn’t relate,” they said. “But now I’m really in it, and I can relate to people. I’m getting a lot of cool conversations and meeting a lot of great friends, and we’re all just kind of sitting with the anxiety of being here — but also, the excitement of being here.”
Erter said the mixer began with some frustration on their end, having just learned that arts and entertainment was a multimedia category rather than strictly writing-based; however, they said when Superstation began to play, it “really changed things” for how they considered the event and the competition.
“It’s really hard to be serious, be a serious journalist in the back writing notes when the band is playing the ‘Full House’ theme,” Erter said. “Coming in, I wasn’t sure how to feel about the band choice, but now, I realize it might have been the perfect choice. … You have all these people who are professionals at what they do, college-level professionals, serious about their craft — and they’re covering such an unserious thing. I think that was a really brilliant choice.”
Despite their doubts, Erter went on to take second place in the arts and entertainment on-site competition.
The Superstation closed their concert with the popular theme song of “Friends,” to the delight of the clapping crowd. Baxter opened the floor for eager reporters to interview the band members and lingering audience members. In a flurry of notepad pages, camera clicks and the improvised lighting of a smartphone flashlight, temporary competitors and new friends got to work.
Baxter said the reason she loves the on-site competitions at SEJC is because they use a shared experience to generate personal and original stories.
“With the way that we tell those stories, we’re also thinking about our own perspectives, our own experiences and how we perceive those experiences, to share with others,” she said. “You have all of these students covering the exact same thing, and they’re all doing it in their own unique way. No two stories will be alike. Everything will be different.”
Staff members at The Murray State News traveled to Cartersville, Georgia, on Thursday, Feb. 5, for the 2026 Southeast Journalism Conference.
The News returned to campus with four awards: Kristopher Fister, associate photo editor, placed second in photography; MacKenzie Rogers, associate editor, placed second in on-site infographic design; The News placed fourth in magazine publication; and The News placed fifth in newspaper publication.
This marks the first year of Murray State’s participation in SEJC.
