El Vaquero reporters and photographers came home with five awards and seven honorable mentions at the two-day stay in Cal State Fullerton on Nov. 2 and 3 during the Journalism Association of Community College’s Southern California Journalism Convention.

Over 30 community colleges from southern California gathered on the Fullerton campus equipped with cameras, notepads, and their journalistic spirit ready to begin the competitions

The convention aimed at providing aspiring journalists experience, knowledge and a competitive edge. About 30 workshops were available and covered a variety of topics such as headline writing, covering a
disaster, and portfolio reviews.

There were 12 on-the-spot competitions that mimicked real-world situations and allowed a short time frame for participants to write their stories or take a photo and write a detailed caption. These competitions included sports writing and photo, critical review, opinion writing, news writing and photo, team feature, broadcast news writing, editorial cartoon, and design layout.

The news writing, news photo, editorial cartoon, and opinion writing on-the-spot competitions all revolved around the same event: keynote speaker Huell Howser. Howser gave an hour-long speech then reporters where immediately lead to a writing lab where they had an hour to piece together an article.

Photographers, for news and all other photo competitions, had the opportunity to take as many pictures as they deemed
necessary but were only allowed to enter one photo and one accompanying caption.

The convention also held mail-in competitions for previous articles or photos. Colleges could mount and mail material that fit the different categories. These items were judged and awarded separately from the on-the-spot competitions.

Glendale’s finest came home with 1st place to Jane Pojawa for photo illustration, 2nd place to Graig Agop for on-the-spot news photo, and 4th place to DJ Kast, Ismael Reyes and Jane Pojowa for a bring-in ad.

Honorable mentions went to Alison Geller for critical review, the El Vaquero staff for front page tabloid layout and inside page layout, Emmanuel Belviz for sports action photo, DJ Kast and Jane Pojawa for bring-in ad, and Richard Kontas for bring-in photo.

El Vaquero has participated in this competition several years running and the staff plans to uphold this tradition, due to the valuable experience gained by the writers and photographers.