Glendale College’s El Vaquero newspaper staff attended the Journalism Association of Community Colleges (JACC) convention at Cal State Fullerton Oct. 15 and 16, bringing back 10 awards for journalistic excellence.
JACC promotes journalism at the community college level through training and seminars.
At southern regional and statewide conferences the organization offers competitions in which students vie against each other in a wide variety of news and feature writing and photography contests.
It is an experience in which students learn about working under pressure, while making connections with professionals and other students.
Contests were based both on on-the-spot competitions that were done at the conference and mail-in entries that were sent prior to the event.
Many community colleges came to Fullerton for the Southern California Regional Conference.
El Vaquero received general excellence for its Web site (www.elvaq.com). Michael Arvizu is the Web site editor.
Bonnie Schindler received first place for the news feature category in the mail-in awards and an honorable mention for her front page tabloid design. Ryan Pile won third place in the news feature category as well.
Photographer Rosalyn Reason won the first place award for her bring-in photo illustration for this year’s theme of eating disorders.
“It feels good to be acknowledged for something you love doing,” said Sports Editor Ramtin Jamshidi after winning fourth place in the sports game story category. “But a 1st place would always make me feel better.”
El Vaquero’s editor-in-chief Maria Kornalian won second place for her bring-in info graph and an honorable mention for her bring-in advertisement. The bring-in advertisement was a public service-type ad encouraging students from GCC to register and vote in the upcoming general election. The info graph was to show the tuition timeline of the increase and decrease of community college fees from 1980 until this year.
The convention began on a Friday afternoon with various workshops for student journalists to attend. The workshops varied from broadcast news writing, touring Cal State Fullerton’s Titan’s communication studios to learning how to write articles for natural disasters, magazine writing, and the powers of being a business manager. Saturday held most of the on-the-spot competitions with two award ceremonies as well.
“JACC is important for journalism students at community colleges because it gives them a chance to excel at the junior college level before they transfer to study journalism at a university,” said Kornalian.
The workshops consisted of an ethics workshop,
entertainment news, business of photography, copy editing, conducting interviews, investigating reporting tips and techniques, sports photography, covering disasters, advertising for dummies, magazine and headline writing and a tour of Cal State Fullerton’s studio.
“The paper seems to be getting better every semester and it’s being proven with a better showing at each competition,” said Jamshidi.
“[JACC is] a really nice learning experience that helps us out in the long run,” said staff member Aren Allayarian.