On Thursday, October 9th, 2025, 16 students representing Community School of Davidson (CSD) High School’s Journalism, Media Productions and Yearbook classes met in front of the school at 7:30 am and boarded a bus that would take them to the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNCC).
They were headed to J-Day, an annual conference for high school journalists hosted by UNCC’s Student Niner Media and the North Carolina Scholastic Media Association (NCSMA).
The conference featured an opening panel, three breakout class sessions and a closing panel during lunch.
When students from more than 12 Charlotte area schools arrived at UNCC’s Student Union, they gathered in a huge room full of round tables for introductions and the opening session.
Scott Fowler and Théoden Janes, Sports Column writer and Features writer for the Charlotte Observer, opened the event by showing trailers for two documentaries they collaborated on and released to the public.
Their first project, “Super Men: The Inside Story of the 2015 Carolina Panthers,” recounted the team’s run to the Super Bowl a decade ago.
The second was “9/11/74” which looked back on a plane crash in Charlotte, NC, on September 11, 1974. Though the catastrophic crash killed 72 of the 82 people on the plane, even those who live in the area where it happened are largely unaware, so the documentary aimed to educate people about the event.
Many journalists from the Charlotte Observer led panels and spoke on a range of topics.
Once the starting session ended, students and guest speakers split up to attend three rounds of breakout sessions which lasted until lunch.
CSD students chose 3 sessions from classes like Audience Development, Podcasting, Sports Journalism, Graphic Design, Media Law, and more.
Senior student journalist and Spartan Sentinel’s Editor-in-Chief, Max Shealy (‘26), attended Audience Development in his first session.
“I was able to ask a lot of questions to journalists from the Charlotte Observer about how they write to try to avoid bias, as well as them talking about how they use data and statistics along with viewer psychology to make the most informative stories to try and maximize views,” Max Shealy said.
After lunch, students attended a closing session panel featuring three journalists nominated for the Pulitzer prize for their coverage of the aftermath of 2024’s Hurricane Helene in Western NC. They described how they operated without cell service and, because of the devastation and lack of definitive leads and storylines, had free reign to find stories wherever they could.
Jen Chaffman, CSD’s Media Productions and Yearbook teacher, has been to the conference many times before when it was hosted by Queens University. Last year, Queens experienced budget cuts and staff changes, and the conference didn’t happen, but J-Day returned at UNCC this year well-organized and with many different guest speakers and sessions for students.
Chaffman says her favorite part of this year‘s conference was hearing professionals tell her students the same things she teaches them in class.
“It’s validating for me, but I think for students to hear that these are real life people doing these things probably makes it a bit more real than just hearing it from their teacher,” Jen Chaffman said.
The conference ended in early afternoon as CSD’s students then returned to campus for regular dismissal. The conference was an early season highlight for those who attended.
