The Collegian will be accepting 17 awards this weekend at the annual California College Media Association Awards Banquet in San Francisco.
The awards — which include three first place, six second place, four third place and four fourth place — will be presented to The Collegian at the CCMA Excellence in Student Media banquet on Saturday at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown San Francisco. As per the mission of the CCMAs, to honor excellence in journalism, the CCMAs was created to instill a unified voice representative of college news media, provide support and education, and foster, nurture and promote collegiate journalism.
“I couldn’t be more proud of my team. We set out every semester with a goal in mind — to inform the community of Fresno State’s news, arts and sports,” said Diana Giraldo, The Collegian’s editor-in-chief. “We look to find interesting stories of bold Bulldogs, inform students of campus happenings and always look to bring prominent topics of discussion to the forefront — receiving the awards are just the cherry on top.”
The award nominations include: Best Website, Best Editorial, Best Column, Best Arts & Entertainment article, Best Newspaper Page Design, Best Headline Portfolio, Best Infographic, Best Use of Social Media, Best News Video, Best Black & White Ad, Best Color Ad, Best Sales Materials and Best Online Ad.
Last year The Collegian was nominated for 13 awards, two of which were first place, beating out larger college newspapers from UCLA, USC and UC Berkeley. This year, the student-run newspaper won more awards than it has since 2009, when the news organization received 18 nominations.
“The number of awards actually came as a surprise to me,” Giraldo said. “This year the rules of the game changed. We usually compete with papers of our size who print daily, at a minimum of three times a week. Seeing as how so many student papers are now decreasing the number of weekly publications and migrating to online platforms, CCMA decided to break schools up into their respective enrollment numbers — meaning that this year we were competing against all California universities that have over 10,000 students.”
Fourteen current and former Collegian staffers placed this year. The students who won awards include: design editor Juan Alvarez, assistant sports editor Jenna Wilson, former art director Beth Izard, art director Casey Supple, assistant art director Kong Thao, visuals editor Khone Saysamongdy, photographer Christian Ortuno, social media director Jessica Johnson, social media reporter Hayley Salazar, assistant news editor Daniel Gligich, Spanish reporter Francisco J. De Leon, sports editor David Chavez, former editor-in-chief and managing editor Troy Pope, and Editor-in-Chief Diana Giraldo.
“This is an immense victory for us,” Giraldo said. “We are the underdog compared to schools like UCLA which have a staff of over 500. Our staff, including editorial and arts, is comprised of 33 hardworking students. I like to say that we may be small but we are powerful.”
The complete list of award winners is below, categories have yet to be announced:
The Collegian 1st
Jenna Wilson 1st
Juan Alvarez 1st
Beth Izard 2nd
Casey Supple, Kong Thao 2nd
The Collegian Recruitment Ad 2nd
Kong Thao 2nd
Khone Saysamongdy 2nd
Christian Ortuno 2nd
Troy Pope 3rd
Jessica Johnson, Diana Giraldo 3rd
Hayley Salazar 3rd
Juan Alvarez, Jenna Wilson 3rd
David Chavez 4th
Hayley Salazar, Francisco J. De Leon 4th
Diana Giraldo 4th
Jenna Wilson, Daniel Gligich 4th