Saturday, Nov. 12, the City College Times staff attended the Journalism Association of Community Colleges’ Northern California Conference in Sacramento and were able to bring home ten awards, including first place in photography.

The conference focused on new applications of technology in journalism with sessions on internet journalism, Twitter and Facebook bootcamps for newspapers who are new to social media.

The conference keynote was led by Jon Ortiz, 49, journalist and writer of the Sacremento Bee’s The State Worker, the first blog dedicated to the people working in state government.

“In essence you take complex events, complex topics, people and moments and distill it down into simple, easy to understand facts for the people.” said Ortiz about the role of the journalist. Ortiz said that the need for journalists is to read above all else.
“If you do not read you have no business writing, taking pictures, talking on radio or television because you’re uninformed and you have given up your right to inform people.” said Ortiz.

Benjamin “Brutus” Bruey, president-at-large of the JACC and student at Santa Rosa Junior College, led the student discussion about the JACC’s next year.

The talks ended with the awards ceremony in which our own Andy Nguyen won first place in bring-in photo for his work covering a hair show. Steve Hill won first place for his on-the-spot news photo covering the keynote speech. The Times’ Daniel Ho won first place for informational graphic.

The Times received a General Excellence Award and placed second in the category of inside page layout.

Other awards:
* Daniel Owens, honorable mention in illustration
* Times staff, honorable mention in photo illustration
* Hill, fourth place in bring-in photo
* Jonathan Marinaro, honorable mention in news story
* Vinita Nelson, honorable mention in copyediting