The Oak Leaf News and Oak Leaf Magazine won a lucky 13 state awards, including a first place statewide in Online General Excellence and a first-time award for Magazine General Excellence from three journalism organizations for work students completed in 2019.
“Over the past year, Oak Leaf students have covered fires, floods, lockdowns and power outages, produced two magazines and hundreds of pieces of content for The Oak Leaf News and social media sites,” said Adviser Anne Belden. “I’m so proud of the entire staff for their dedication, hard work and team work. ”
The awards include one Western states regional first place video journalism award for a piece about Homelessness on the Joe Rodota Trail that is now headed to the national competition. Other individual awards are for writing, photography and photo illustration.
“Most meaningful are the general excellence awards from two organizations because they include the entire Oak Leaf staff and attest to the above-and-beyond hard work and dedication of student reporters, editors, photographers, designers, podcasters and videographers,” Belden said.
A full list of awards is as follows:
Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Mark of Excellence Awards
First place – Region 11 (Arizona, California, Guam, Hawaii, Nevada and Mariana Islands) and headed to national competition: Rebecca Bell and Heather Murray – online/digital feature videography, “Homeless on the Joe Rodota Trail”. They created this video in Brian Antonson’s Journalism 55: Multimedia Journalism class in the fall.
California Newspaper Publishers Association’s Campus Journalism Awards
- First place, online general excellence: Theoakleafnews.com
- First place, profile writing: Zane Zinkl, “Resistance: Now and forever”
- Second place, photo illustration: Edgar Soria Garcia, “Carceral state: The prison industrial complex wasn’t the solution for my mom”
- Fifth place, profile writing: Riley Palmer, “Double Life: classes by day, jokes by night”
Journalism Association of Community Colleges State Awards
- General Excellence, Online Edition: Theoakleafnews.com, the Oak Leaf staff
- Magazine General Excellence, Oak Leaf Magazine, the Oak Leaf staff
- First place, magazine photo story/essay: Zane Zinkl, Abraham Fuentes and Edgar Soria-Garcia, “Kincade photo gallery”
- Second place, magazine news feature: Zane Zinkl, “Changing minds: Psychedelic psychotherapy in Sonoma County”
- Third place, magazine news feature: Séamus Reed, “Garages and bedrooms and bars: making it big in Sonoma County”
- Second place, profile feature story: Riley Palmer, “Double Life: classes by day, jokes by night”
- Honorable mention, opinion story: Jesse Kapakui, “Carceral state: The prison industrial complex wasn’t the solution for my mom”
- Honorable mention, news photo: Abraham Fuentes, “Kincade fire – plane dumps retardant