Student Journalists Take Home Top Honors at JACC SoCal Regional Competition 

Posted on October 23, 2023

Student journalists from The Hornet student news outlet and Inside Fullerton student magazine took home top honors at the Southern California Regional competition for the Journalism Association of Community Colleges which was held in Northridge on October 21.

Among the awards were first place prizes in the following categories: Magazine News Feature for Mariana Ramos’s coverage of the debate over critical race theory in Orange County schools, Magazine Illustration for Jett Shim’s Illustration accompanying an opinion story about the troubled use of the diabetes drug Ozempic for weight loss, and Online Photo Essay for Yasmin Sotelo’s photo series on a day in the life of Hornets’ softball player Allyson Fuentes.

Additionally, first-semester Hornet staffers Ronette Johnson and Guadalupe Gonzalez won awards in on-the-spot competitions at the JACC SoCal conference in copy editing, feature photography and news writing, for which they only had a few hours to produce professional-quality, original content. Johnson took home second place in the category of Feature Photo and Gonzalez was awarded third place in Newswriting with additional honorable mention for copyediting.

Fullerton College student journalists awards for JACC 2023 SoCal Competition were as follows:

First Place:

Magazine News Feature, Mariana Ramos

Magazine Illustration, Jett Shim

Online Photo Essay, Yasmin Sotelo

Second Place:

Photo Illustration, Logan Stupin & Jett Shim

Video Journalism, Bryan Chavez

Third Place:

Magazine Opinion Story, Denise Grande

Magazine Profile, Olivia Peña

Photo illustration, Jett Shim, Logan Stupin, Ian Winstanley