Five hundred students and advisers are expected to attend the Journalism Education Association of Northern California’s 10th annual NorCal Media Day on Saturday in the Palo Alto High School Media Arts Center.

According to JEANC board member and Paly journalism teacher Rod Satterthwaite, Paly’s multi-million-dollar facility is fitting for such an event and has been its location for the last 10 years.

“There’s no other place where you have that combination of tradition, facilities, a welcoming nature, and geographical closeness,” Satterthwaite said. 

Unique topics such as podcasting, TikTok post creation, artificial intelligence and even drone instruction will be among the 80 sessions, event organizers said.

Satterthwaite said it is necessary in today’s world to address and teach all sorts of media, as the world moves away from the traditional ways of journalism.

“There’s never been a time like this in our history where news is produced and consumed in so many different ways,” Satterthwaite said. “If we’re trying to prepare students to be effective consumers and producers of news, they need to be exposed to all these different varieties. To keep up with the times and to be valid moving into this part of the 21st century, you really have to provide all those opportunities.”

In addition to the workshops, Satterthwaite said it will be an opportunity to bring like-minded students together. 

“We want to make sure we have an opportunity to bring people together,” Satterthwaite said. “It doesn’t happen anywhere else in this area, where there’s so many people coming to one spot to learn about this [journalism].”