The Trend attended the 2025 Oklahoma Collegiate Media Association (OCMA) Conference Wednesday, April 9 which was held at Oklahoma State University (OSU).
After a year without an OCMA conference, OCMA coordinator and OSU advisor to the O’Colly, Brett Dawson, organized this year’s conference in no time at all
Although the event was late notice, The Trend as well as three other school papers were able to attend this year’s conference.
OCMA 2025 Conference was an all day event. There were two session blocks with three different speakers you could go sit in and listen to. The three different session speakers were, Joe Mussatto from The Oklahoman, Jason Collington from Tulsa World, and Ryan Welton from Doable Digital Media.
- Mussatto talked about the buried treasure of having to dig deeper into your storytelling.
- Collington talked about how to start a bidding war in the journalism job market.
- Welton talked about fighting through news apathy, misinformation, and more topics along these lines.
Following right after the session blocks were lunch and awards. The Trend brought home six awards.
- Gary Jackson: First Place in B Division Investigative/Explanatory.
- Gary Jackson: First Place in B Division Lifestyle-Reviews.
- Gary Jackson: First Place in B Division News Feature/Personality Profile.
- Matthew Yokum: First Place in B Division General Column.
- Preston Palm: First Place in B Division Sports Column.
- Elyanne Kenney: First Place in B Division News photo.
After the awards came the big speaker of the day, Ryan McNeill from Reuters Global Data Team. He talked about journalism from space more specifically using satellites to document atrocities.
The 2025 OCMA Conference was a success, and The Trend cannot wait for next year’s OCMA Conference.
Cassie Srock is a second-year communication major at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.
