By Maria Marroquin Monroy
East Los Angeles College Campus News brought home 14 awards from the Journalism Association of Community Colleges SoCal Conference held on Oct. 19 at California State University, Fullerton.
Of the 14 awards Campus News staff received, the biggest were General Excellence in publication for both print and online edition.
Along with workshops, the convention held awards for publication and on-the-spot entries. Publication awards were for entries that were published in the previous semester’s college paper. The on-the-spot awards were for work done for contests during the convention.
Steven Adamo, art director for Campus News, took first place for front page layout. “The first time I competed, I didn’t make it past the first round. The other time or two I didn’t even place, so it feels great to win,” Adamo said.
“It’s what I’ve struggled with during my time at Campus News and now I feel that I’ve finally improved,” he said.
Adamo also took third place in the publication award for editorial cartoon and took a meritorious for enterprise news story/series, along with former staff writer Vincent Austin and staff writer Vicky Nguyen.
Nguyen, staff writer, who has attended the conferences three times said, “This JACC was only for the (southern California) region, so it was much smaller, but I also felt less pressure because of that. I just had fun and enjoyed my time.” She said she was surprised with winning the award because she wasn’t aware she was being considered for this category however, she felt proud of herself.
Ivana Amaral, staff writer, received an honorable mention in the publication awards for editorial cartoon and third place in the on-the-spot contest for the same category.
This year was Amaral’s second time at JACC and she said while she wasn’t expecting to win, she knew she had done well in the competition.
“I was somewhat surprised but, I also felt really good about my cartoon when I finished it because it came out so well and I did it within an hour,” she said.
Former staff members Jose Cazares, Miguel Barragan and Austin took fourth place for feature writing. Noe Ortega received an honorable mention for sports game story and former staff member Diego Linares won second place for sports feature photo.
Current front page editor Luis Castilla took third place for profile feature.
Castilla’s feature was about Los Angeles-based muralist Sand One and his inspiration for this story came to him because he sees her murals all around his house and he thought it’d be interesting to know what she had to say about them.
“I feel that when I write a feature it’s more personal because you’re getting to know a person on a deeper fundamental level and that’s why I like writing them,” Castilla said.
Campus News Editor-in-Chief Melody Ortiz, Managing Editor Andrew Ayala and photographer Julie Santiago also won on-the-spot awards. Ortiz received second place for editorial cartoon, Ayala go an honorable mention for critical review and Santiago got an honorable mention for news photo.
“This time I got honorable mention and even though it’s frustrating to not place, it felt good to get the general excellence award,” Ayala said.
This year’s SoCal conference was put together by Sylvia Rico-Sanchez, an ELAC communications professor and co-adviser for Campus News.
Jean Stapleton, chair of ELAC’s Journalism Department and co-adviser for Campus News, said she was proud of her students and her co-adviser. “They did really well at this conference,” Stapleton said about her students.
“I’m really proud of Sylvia Rico-Sanchez, who ran the whole conference, and some of our students who helped her with the logistics of the conference.” She also said she was excited because Campus News had never won general excellence for both editions at the same time.
presented her workshop “Reporting the Manson Family Murders” during the convention. She talked about her career as a young journalist and being a woman in the field.
During the years of the Manson trials, she was a courthouse reporter for City News Service and a field reporter for Radio News West, where covered the Tex Watson trial.
Publication Awards:
General Excellence- Print Edition- Campus News Staff
General Excellence- Online Edition- Campus News Staff
Editorial Cartoon- 3rd Place– Steven Adamo
Editorial Cartoon- Honorable Mention– Ivana Amaral
Front Page Layout- 1st Place– Steven Adamo
Sports Game Story- Honorable Mention– Noe Ortega
Feature Story- 4th Place– Jose Ivan Cazares, Miguel Barragan and Vincent Austin
Enterprise News Story/Series- Meritorious– Vincent Austin, Steven Adamo and Vicky Nguyen
Profile Feature Story- 3rd Place– Luis Castilla
Sports Feature Photo- 2nd Place– Diego Linares
On-the-Spot Awards:
Editorial Cartoon- 2nd Place– Melody Ortiz
Editorial Cartoon- 3rd Place– Ivana Amaral
Critical Review- Honorable Mention– Andrew Ayala
News Photo- Honorable Mention– Julie Santiago