El Vaquero received three awards, including first place for broadsheet design, fourth place for an info-graphic, and an honorable mention for a designed advertisement at the Journalism Association of Community Colleges Southern California Region Conference October 19 through 20 at Cal State Fullerton.

The weekend of workshops and competitions hosted by the university’s journalism department offered community college newspaper staffs the opportunity to display and exchange their work and to gain valuable lessons and skills from media professionals.
Friday sessions were lectures on issues directly related to the field of journalism and mass media. Saturday’s events began early and continued until the awards presentation later that evening. The competitions were designed to test a student reporter’s ability to generate high quality material under restrictive deadlines. Several El Vaquero staff members, while satisfied with their personal experiences, felt that the conference was disorganized and failed to yield the results they had earlier expected.

Among the many events in news and feature coverage throughout the day were a news photo shoot, where El Vaquero staff writer Ani Asatryan clamored with others for a winning shot of a staged fight in a parking lot, and a critical review, where staff writers Michael Konigsberg and Jennifer Carno visited the campus art gallery exhibiting artifacts of natural and art history for critique.

“If anything, the competiton reminded me of the urgency of effective news coverage,” said Konigsberg. Many of the college staffs in attendance seemed more intent on winning than on aspiring to new heights. El Vaquero sports writer Roderick Daniels was glad to have the opportunity to interact with other journalists. “It was a good time overall,” he said. “Meeting with other photographers and writers helped me understand my strengths and weaknesses.”
El Vaquero editor Jennifer Bernardo likewise was interested to see how El Vaquero measures up to other campus papers. “Competition honed [the staff’s] writing abilities and offered them valuable information on newspaper production,” she said. “The staff ought to attend every year.”
While he enjoyed learning useful information about other colleges’ journalism programs and technology, El Vaquero adviser Michael Moreau said what was most valuable was what Southern California Region president Meg O’Neil’s statement that everyone who attended and participated was a winner. “I was impressed by our staff,” said Moreau. “Everyone did well, considering all our newcomers.”

Moreau. “Everyone did well, considering all our newcomers.”