New York City is one of the top cities for journalism in the world.That made it an appropriate place for about 1,600 young college journalists, and their advisors, including Castleton professor David Blow and six members of the Spartan staff, to gather at the Roosevelt Hotel for the College Media Advisers’ Spring National Convention.

The conference was held from March 15-17. On Thursday and Friday the conference went from 9 until 5:30, and on Saturday from 9 to 2.

The Spartan representatives wound up missing the entire first day of the conference because of a train delay, but that did not keep them from picking up some new facts about their craft.

“I learned to tie-dye text, what more can you ask for,” said Janet Gillett, one of the page designers of The Spartan.

The conference was designed for young journalists working or looking to work in various aspects of the field from newspapers and magazines to literary journals and broadcast media.

“I thought most of the sessions I went to provided good information,” said Dawson Raspuzzi, editor of The Spartan, who went on to say that his favorite session was about the ethics involved in newspaper writing presented by a journalism professor and a lawyer.

The Spartan was entered into the CMA Student Apple Awards under the category of 4-year non Daily Broadsheet. The Spartan won favorable reviews during a critique by an on-site evaluator, an editor from Texas, who praised the paper’s design and editorial page.

“I was really pleased with how the critique went, and I thought he was really impressed with our paper,” said Blow, who added that the evaluator gave them a full hour critique, as opposed to the scheduled half-hour.

Despite the good review, The Spartan, fell short of the Apple award, but the staff is confident of their chances in the future.

“I thought for a small-school paper, ours was better than most of what we saw. I thought we had more content than most of what we saw,” said Raspuzzi.