The Griffin's ACP Trip: Long Beaches and Lasting Memories

By: Kaitlin O’Meara, Asst. Copy Editor

You might have noticed the lack of a new edition of “The Griffin” last week and wondered what we could’ve been up to. From Wednesday, March 5 to Sunday, March 9, fifteen of the Griffin’s editors took a trip to Long Beach, CA. for the annual Associated College Press Spring Media Conference. Across the three days of the conference, we got to learn more about editing and writing while enjoying the lovely California sun. 

Out of the many breakout sessions that I went to during the conference, my two favorites were about solidarity in journalism and the process of publishing a bilingual magazine. The session on solidarity in journalism featured an interesting conversation about the role of activism and community-building in the process of good journalism. There was a focus on breaking news stories – or those that would more likely be found in our news section rather than features – but its ideas about the role of being involved and caring for the people whose stories you are covering, across sections. 

The session on publishing a bilingual magazine was especially interesting because it was run by the students who organized and facilitated the change. Within this session, there was a lot of discussion about identity in writing and how you can preserve one’s identity through it. Their mission is to uplift Latino stories from outside of the mainstream media, but not all Latinos speak Spanish, so they transitioned from being a fully Spanish publication to a bilingual one to be more inclusive of all. As a Spanish major and someone who’s (obviously) interested in writing, I thought it was interesting to learn about their choice to go from fully Spanish to bilingual and the difficulties associated with the writing and editing process. Though a lot of their focus was on the design process, I found it very inspiring to hear about what they went through to make their publication happen the way they wanted.

Aside from the conference, we also had a lot of time to enjoy California, its amazing weather, and the beautiful city of Long Beach. We spent the sunsets on Friday and Saturday on the beach (yes, THE long beach), which was my first time at the Pacific Ocean. On Saturday, Maddy, Hannah and I went on an adventure to go shopping in a nearby neighborhood, and though it was not great, I had an excellent coffee, and we ended up finding a super cute farmer’s market on our way back. Naturally, we had to stop and look around, and it ended up being so much fun. We tried a ton of different citrus fruits – including the lemon grapefruit, which I did not know was a thing, and ended up buying some berries and yogurt. We wanted to bring back one of these grapefruits but we didn’t have a knife – despite my ominous insistence in our group chat that I needed one with no explanation – so, unfortunately, they were left behind.

The best part of this trip, however, was getting to spend time with the Griffin staff. I really only get to spend time with everyone on Thursdays during editing night, so it was so much fun to hang out without the pressure of putting out the paper. One of my personal highlights of the trip was accusing Colin of being a misogynist, leading to him writing a speech titled “International Women’s Day Speech: A Salute to All Genders, but Mostly Women”, and then performing it – a day late, might I add – in the Las Vegas airport. This was then taken on the MAAC trip, and so now Colin has an army of women ready to attack anything he says with, “Really? During Women’s History Month?” We were also introduced to the joys of riding electric scooters and many of us took full advantage of this newfound mode of transportation.

The best scooter ride was not one of mine, though. It was when Dr. Snyder heroically hopped on a Lime scooter to chase after the bus Ava left her phone on – a close second was scooting to Bubba Gump with Mikayla, Dr. Snyder, Bri and Sophie, and then the lunch there that followed. I really struggled to put that lunch experience into words, but as our editor-in-chief and #1 Bubba Gump fan Ms. Ava C. Green declared: it was truly “gump-tastic.” 

The beauty of The Griffin is not just the excellent paper we put out weekly, but the connections that we make with the people along the way, and this trip exemplified that. I had so much fun on this trip, my first trip, and I can’t wait to go again next year!