Journalism Association of Community Colleges awards the Tower 13 awards in total

At the 2016 Journalism Association of Community Colleges (JACC) NorCal Regional Conference, the Laney Tower was awarded the JACC’s highest award: General Excellence. The Tower also received an additional 12 awards across a variety of categories for its investigative reporting, graphic design, and news photography.
The JACC presented the awards to representatives of the Tower on Oct. 15 at its NorCal Regional Conference, which brought together colleges from the Northern California area to Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, Calif. 
The awards were based on work done by these colleges over the course of the last twelve months, with a separate group of awards awarded for work completed at the conference in On-the-Spot Competitions that tested the attendees’ ability to write and photograph under tight time constraints. 
The Opinion Writing On-the-Spot Competition, for example, required students to attend a keynote speech by Karen de Sa, an award-winning San Francisco Chronicle journalist who’d gotten her start at a community college journalism program in Northern California. 
Students then had one hour to write an original opinion piece about her speech and the topics she covered.
Tower Managing Editor Alice Feller placed second in this competition, her second award of the conference, rounding out a “lucky” 13 for the Tower overall. Those awards included the following:
News Story
Tinniae McConico, 2nd place
Wilfred Galila, 3rd place
Feature Story
KR Nava, Honorable Mention
Profile Feature Story
Shane Frink, 3rd Place
Bonnie Oviatt, 4th place
Enterprise News Story/Series
Homelessness series (see below)
News Photo
David Hiltbrand, 2nd place
Photo Story-Essay
David Hiltbrand, 2nd place
Sports Action Photo
Alishia Thomas, 2nd place
Front Page Layout
KR Nava, 2nd place
Informational Graphic
KR Nava, 3rd place

“EXEMPLARY”

“The hallmark of an excellent college newspaper is in the stories it decides to take on,” JACC judges wrote in their assessment of the Tower. “In that regard, the Laney Tower is exemplary.”
The awards came after a shift in the mission of the Tower towards in-depth investigative reporting.
Over the last semester, the Tower turned a more critical eye on the Peralta Community Colleges District itself. Changes in the district’s administration demanded it, as recent stories in the Tower on class cuts (in our May 5 issue), the struggles of students with disabilities (in our April 7 and May 5 issues), and administrative mismanagement (in our most recent three issues) have shown.
But the Tower also stretched itself beyond the bounds of the Peralta Colleges. In February and March of 2016, the Tower did a two-part series on homelessness in the East Bay, including a profile of a formerly homeless Laney College student. 
In the final issue of the spring semester, the Tower covered funding threats faced by Ethnic Studies departments across the Bay Area; the connections between responses to HIV/AIDS epidemics in both Kenya and Oakland; and female incarceration and domestic violence across the United States. 
In the Laney Tower’s first-ever summer issue released on Sept. 29, 2016, the Tower was the only community college newspaper to participate in the SF Homeless Project, organized by the SF Chronicle. 
It brought together over 70 publications across the Bay Area to cover homelessness on a single day in an attempt to push forth action on the issue.
The Tower’s coverage included stories by Alice Feller, on the history of homelessness in Alameda County; Alison Stapp, about abused women on the verge of homelessness; Bonnie Oviatt, on homeless shelters in Oakland and Berkeley; and Tinniae McConico, on Oakland Mayor Libby Schaff’s plans to solve the housing crisis. 
The four received the highest award in the category of Enterprise News Story/Series, awarded for excellent investigative reporting.