Journalism students clean up at state conference

By Ellen Silk
NEWS EDITOR

At the Spring 2009 Journalism Association of Community Colleges’ annual convention, the Guardsman and etc. magazine took home 27 awards, including the Pacesetter award for the Guardsman.

Etc. magazine took home a total of 11 awards, with The Guardsman taking home 16 in mail-in, on-the-spot and bring-in categories. City College took first place awards for on-the-spot news story by Sean Singer and mail-in first place magazine opinion story by Stephanie Rice. The Guardsman and etc. magazine both won the general excellence award.

Winning awards wasn’t the only thing to do at the convention. After a key note speech from Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Marjie Lundstrom, an investigative reporter for the Sacramento Bee, students from both City College publications, along with students from community colleges across the state participated in contests and workshops,

“This is my first year going and I liked seeing all the different papers and how they worked,”  said Roxanne Bequio, calendar editor for the Guardsman. “The contests were nerve-racking, but I was proud of myself for participating.”

The JACC 2009 convention offered workshops like “Intermediate Indesign,” “Writing the Game Story,”  and  “Can College Newspapers Still Make an Imprint in the 21st Century.” The Guardsman’s own Alex and Jessica Luthi, along with John Hornberg from San Jose State University, hosted the workshop “Newsroom 2.0: Integrating Social Networking into Your Publication.”

“Even though the turnout for our workshop was low we addressed a lot of issues. I think we did a fairly good job informing people on how to use Facebook and Twitter for their papers,” said Jessica Luthi, editor in chief for the Guardsman.