By Luis Diaz
Campus News, East Los Angeles College’s school mewspaper, won multiple awards including General Excellence for the newspaper’s website www.campusnews.com. The convention also had multiple events for aspiring journalists to continue learning things.
“[Winning] shows a good example for the writers on my team, so they know the standards that I expect from them,” Editor in Chief Teresa Acosta said.
ELAC student Steven Adamo took 1st place in photo illustration and 4th in Infographics with Juan Calvillo.
“It feels good to represent ELAC. I couldn’t have done without the Journalism Department and staff,” Art Director Steven Adamo said.
Campus News Editor in Chief Teresa Acosta took the most awards home. She took second place for on-the-spot front layout, honorable mention for feature photo and third place for the on spot opinion competition.
ELAC alumn Zasha Hayes took home second place for Editorial Cartoon.
Copy Editors Juan Calvillo and Brenda de la Cruz took the honorable mention for on-the-spot copy editing competition.
The convention was hosted by Cal State Fullerton and gave aspiring journalists the opportunity to develop and exchange ideas that can help them become better journalists.
The conference had a variety of workshops, contests and meetings students can participated in.
One conference workshop was on networking and used the idea of speed networking for the event.
This workshop gave students the opportunity to speak with four year representatives from Cal State Fullerton, San Jose State University, Cal State LA and San Francisco State University.
These universities offered information on what each university’s journalism program can offer to transfer students.
From investigative reporting to sports media, there is a bit of everything each university can offer a student who wants to move forward with their journalism career.
JACC had nine guest speakers who offered workshops from developing new skills on how to interview people to covering college sports for broadcast.
“Upping your interviewing game” was a hands-on workshop hosted by Jesse Marks from Voice of San Diego and Cannabis reporter Jackie Bryant.
This workshop helped students take different approaches when it comes to interviewing a person.
“Research is important in being able to set up minimum and maximum goals,” Marks said. Research is really important because being able to know who you are interviewing and being able to get straight to the point is key.
Being able to outline questions is also important because it becomes a guide for the interview.
The hands-on workshop involved interviewing Cannabis reporter Jackie Bryant based on her experiences as a journalist.
“I think by reporting on cannabis I can show the hypocrisy and the bias we have around vices and how these vices are used,” Bryant said.
Another workshop offered at JACC was on how to prepare for internships.
“Internships Q&A- Setting yourself up for success,” was a workshop where Jakob McWhinney explains the process of getting ready for internships.
From having an updated resume to gaining experience in the college newspaper
“Covering college sports for broadcast” was a workshop offered by Cal State Fullerton that gave an idea of what it takes to get into sports media.
The event was hosted by Dr. Gayle Jansen Brisbane and Daniela Alvarado this workshop explained what it takes to get into sports media and the different classes offered at Fullerton to get into broadcasting.
Cal State Fullerton offers paid internships through ESPN+ .
JACC is an opportunity for aspiring journalists to gain new skills that can be applied when writing for their college newspaper.
Different techniques and ways to approach to conduct an interview or how to prepare for success when applying to internships.
Being able to speak to representatives from different colleges can give students a guide of where they want their career to go.