Journalism Association of Community Colleges gives Tower 11 awards for writing, design

By Bonnie Oviatt

The Laney Tower earned 11 awards at the 2017 Journalism Association of Community Colleges (JACC) State Conference held in Sacramento at the DoubleTree Inn from March 29 through April 2.

The awards were for a wide variety of work done over the past 12 months and for on-the-spot competitions held at the conference.

Sarah Carpenter, Alice Feller, KR Nava, Bonnie Oviatt and faculty advisor Scott Strain attended the conference, which drew hundreds of journalism students from across the state.

Participants were urged to network and not only get to know other students and see how they did things, but to network with the wide variety of journalists speaking and teaching at the event.

There were seminars in everything from how to do an interview to virtual reality, from podcasting to how to report on sports, from how to report in the era of Trump to the changing role of print media and how new technology is affecting the job market.

In addition to the seminars there were also on-the-spot competitions in news writing, editorial cartoon drawing, copyediting, and various categories of photography.

Carpenter received an honorable mention in the copyediting competition, which tested editors’ knowledge on grammar, current events, geography, and AP style.

Nava, Carpenter and Feller all received multiple awards at the banquet held on Saturday evening. The Laney Tower was especially strong in the design categories, winning first place for Front Page Layout, Inside Page Layout, and Photo Story-Essay.

Feller described the conference as “great” and added that there was a lot of good information that we can use to make the Tower even better.

The awards won by the Laney Tower included:

• Enterprise News Story/Series
  Alice Feller, Tinniae McConico, Bonnie Oviatt and Alison Stapp, Meritorious
• Column Writing
  Alice Feller, Honorable Mention
• Critical Review
  Sarah Carpenter, Third Place
• Editorial
  KR Nava, Honorable Mention
• Editorial Cartoon
  Sarah Carpenter, Third Place
• Front Page Layout
  Staff, First Place
• Inside Page Layout
  Adrienne Miller and KR Nava, First Place
• News Story
  Hoku Gearheard-Gendre and Wesley Hrubes, Fourth Place
• Photo Illustration
  David Hiltbrand and KR Nava, First Place
• Photo Story-Essay
  David Hiltbrand and KR Nava, Fourth Place
• On-the-Spot Copyediting
  Sarah Carpenter, Honorable Mention