City College Journalism Wins!
By An Pham
City College’s journalism students attended the Journalism Association of Community College (JACC) Fall 2020 conference, which was held online using the Qiqo chat platform and Zoom from Nov. 6 to Nov. 8, 2020, and took home awards left and right.
“Thanks to COVID-19, it’s been over six months since people have been allowed to gather in large groups,” JACC’s press release said. “That didn’t stop the 217 delegates who virtually came together this past weekend, for the first time, in a virtual environment, when the Journalism Association of Community Colleges held its 2020 Fall Conference on Friday, Nov. 6 through Sunday, Nov. 8.”
“The event was hosted using the Qiqochat platform, which provides a social wrapper around Zoom meetings so participants can move themselves in and out of Zoom spaces,” JACC’s press release said.
Over a dozen journalism students at City College joined the three-day-long event. Some participated in contests, and several won awards.
The Guardsman’s Co-Editor-In-Chief Jennifer Yin was one of the students who joined the event and won first place in the photo story contest. She was overall happy that she took part in the contest and won awards.
“I felt like that shoot was good, but not good enough to win first place at JACC. The saturation of the photos were off and the quality was super pixelated.”, Yin said. “I suppose the judges saw something that I must have missed and like folks say, ‘you are your own worst critic.’”
The event was a success thanks to its easy-to-use platform, QiqoChat. Students were having zero problems navigating from a room to another. Though, the competitions weren’t that easy.
The Guardsman’s Illustrator Manon Cadenaule participated in her first JACC contest, and even though it was online, she was satisfied with her time spent at the event.
“I have never been to JACC before, but I can only imagine the excitement of going there and being able to speak with all these great people! Therefore, I felt the energy these folks put into the event this year to stay still, strong, adaptable with the new norms and provide useful content.” Cadenaule said.
Cadenaule won an honorable mention for the Editorial Cartoon contest.
“The competition in itself was very destabilizing due to the lack of time, but I enjoyed putting my brain to work and coming up with what I could do best at that time and place. It was undoubtedly missing lots of things and not really well done, but I hope the idea was fun! I will do it again!” Cadenaule said.
“The interface was easy to use, there was descriptive information on how to attend lectures, and I liked how easy it was to jump from one room to the next. The on-the-spot completion was intense since we only had a limited amount of time to write, copyedit, and upload our work,” said Yin.
“I am not that tech-savvy so uploading my work was a challenge and I, unfortunately, was five minutes late because of it. The only thing I would suggest to the council at JACC is to add a sign language translator to the lectures so that people with disabilities can enjoy JACC too.” Yin added.
List of Winners:
ON-THE-SPOT CONTESTS:
Editorial Cartoon
Honorable Mention
Manon Cadenaule
MAIL-IN COMPETITIONS:
Enterprise News Story/Series
Meritorius Award
Natalia Bogdanov
Tyler Breisacher
Jennifer Yin
Column Writing
Fourth Place
Andy Damian-Correa
Editorial Cartoon
Third Place
Lisa Martin
Inside Page Design
Honorable Mention
Chiara DiMartino
Illustration
Third Place
Lisa Martin
Fourth Place
Lisa Martin
Photo Story-Essay
First Place
Jennifer Yin
Honorable Mention
Jennifer Yin
Sports Action Photo
First Place
Fran Smith