By Lourdes Espinoza
Part of East Los Angeles College’s Campus News’ staff won awards at the 57th annual Journalism Association of Community Colleges’ state convention winning a total of five awards last weekend.
Rodolfo Trujillo, writer and copyeditor, won first place in copyediting. Trujillo said, “I’m very honored to have won that. I’ve been going to JACC for a few years now and I was really, really surprised when I won. The best I have ever gotten to was fourth place.”
Bryan Pedroza, cartoonist and photographer, won fourth place in editorial cartoon. Pedroza said, “I feel awesome. It feels great to win. This is the second time that I went to JACC and last time I didn’t win anything. This time around, I didn’t think I was going to win.
“I was going to be happy getting an honorable mention, but fourth place out of 50 students that competed in the state feels like an accomplishment. JACC was really fun and I learned a lot more,” he said.
Erik Luna, editor-in-chief, won honorable mention for the news writing competition. Tadzio Garcia, assistant online editor and photographer, also won honorable mention for the feature photo competition. Kien Ha, cartoonist, won honorable mention for mail-in newspaper line illustration.
Student journalists at the community college level from all over California competed for top awards in on-the-spot and mail-in competitions during this state convention, March 22-24, at the Burbank Marriott in Burbank, Calif..
College newspaper staffs like Talon Marks from Cerritos, Renegade Rip from Bakersfield, The Guardsmen from San Francisco and The Hornet from Fullerton participated in this event. Even Rhode Island’s college paper, “The Unfiltered Lens” attended.
Bring-In ad contests and on-the-spot competitions helped these students gain hands-on experience. Competitions tested student journalists in categories from photography, broadcast news writing, feature writing, editorial cartoons, critical reviews and copyediting among many.
In conjunction, workshops were hosted by professional journalists who have been employed by publications like the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee, National Public Radio, KPCR AM 1530 and the Associated Press.
Luna said, “I’m glad that people got the chance to attend the workshops and it opened their eyes to the possibilities of becoming a journalist and what exactly it takes to become a journalist. Everybody had fun. We walked away with some awards and it was a learning experience”