DVC Journalists Win Awards at JACC Conference

Journalism students from the Diablo Valley College student newspaper, The Inquirer, won a number of awards at the regional conference of the Northern California Journalism Association of Community Colleges, held Nov. 7 at San Jose State University.

The day-long conference drew 287 students and faculty from 21 Northern California community colleges, and included workshops and “on-the-spot” competitions. The keynote address was by a former Chabot College student who is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist.

The judges were all professional journalists from media outlets in the greater Bay Area.

Zach Becker won a first place in feature photography for his photo of a DVC student eating from a bag of bagels found in a dumpster behind Whole Foods in Lafayette.

Christian Villanueva won three second place awards: one for his news feature story about DVC students who call themselves “freegans” and hunt for food in dumpsters because they reject waste and consumerism; one for an editorial calling for the ASDVC elections committee to throw out the spring election results and order a special election; and one for his page design of a story and photographs of DVC business instructor Martha Laham and her tattoos.

Ariel Messman-Rucker won a second place for her news story on the first trial to involve a suspected grade buyer in DVC’s cash-for-grades scandal.

In the “on-the spot” competitions at the conference, Nick Sestanovich won a fourth place in opinion writing, and Chris Corbin and Ryan Daley won honorable mentions for their news photos.