Current Viewpoints staff members with their General Excellence Award

Student Newspaper Staff Wins 11 Awards at Conference

Six journalism students from Riverside City College received a total of 11 awards from the Journalism Association of Community Colleges at its annual Southern California Conference.
Student journalists from community colleges across Southern California competed by entering stories, photos, and designs published in their respective student newspapers during the 2014 fall and 2015 spring semesters. There was also an on-the-spot writing contest during the conference in Fullerton.
The College’s student newspaper, Viewpoints, received a General Excellence Award, ranking third among Community College newspapers. Viewpoints won for its October 30, November 13, and December 1, 2014 editions, which included front-page stories about the Tigers’ football team ranking No. 1 and RCC police missing a federal deadline to report crime statistics. Professional journalists judged the competition, looking at writing, news coverage, leadership, photography, editing and design.

Individual winners included:

• Former Viewpoints managing editor Valerie Osier won first place for an advertising design about the newspaper’s online podcast and fourth place for front-page design.

• Former Viewpoints writer Steven Smith won second place for a photo illustration and fourth place for video journalism about a fire at RCC.

• Former Viewpoints writer Victor Gallegos won second place for a sports story about a boxing event in Ontario.

• Editor-in-chief James Williams won a fourth place award for video journalism and front-page design.

• News editor Crystal Olmedo won fourth place for front-page design and an honorable mention for an on-the-spot news story about a keynote panel discussion by Daily Breeze journalists who won a 2015 Pulitzer Prize.

• Editor Dominique Redfearn took fourth place for on-the-spot copy editing at the conference.

Information about Viewpoints and RCC’s Journalism program is available at www.viewpointsonline.org<http://www.viewpointsonline.org/> and rccjournalism.blogspot.com<http://rccjournalism.blogspot.com/>.