Valley Star

Issue date: 11/9/05 Section: News

Media Credit: Salvador Aguilar

The staff and advisers of the Valley Star were honored with their sixth straight General Excellence award at the Journalism Association of Community Colleges regional conference held in Fullerton Oct. 28 and 29 and earned 25 individual awards.

"I am so proud of not only last semester's staff that earned an amazing 19 mail-in awards, but of the new talent on this semester's staff," said LaGina Phillips, who served as editor in chief fall 2004 and spring 2005 and took home four individual awards at the competition.

"This is a staff full of hard-working individuals guided to success by dedicated advisers."

The conference, held at Cal State Fullerton, spanned two days and included more than 25 schools from all over Southern California. The event featured competitions for mail-in entries from the Spring 2005 semester and on-the-spot contests.

When the points from the mail-in categories were totaled, the Star was deemed one of the top seven community college newspapers in Southern California.

Among the staff's individual winners, Photo Editor Dan Villasenor took home six awards, including first- and second-place on-the-spot awards; and former editorial cartoonist Tiffany Farmakis collected five awards in the line illustration and editorial cartoon categories.

First semester photographer Nina Bruckner won third place on-the-spot news photo and first semester writer Brian Dean took fourth place on-the-spot opinion writing.

"It's a terrific honor," said Villasenor. "I'm happy to have won against stiff competition."

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