Valley Star staff hauls in awards at JACC

Former and current members received 15 awards at the contest held at CSUN

By Maïa Richaud, Staff Writer

Lilliana Noriega is a first year student at Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) and a swimmer for the Lady Monarchs swim team who has been swimming competitively since she was 12 years old at the Los Angeles Swim Club. Noriega fulfilled her goal of breaking a 25.10 second college record in the 50 meter freestyle that had stood since 1975, beating it by a tenth of a second. Photo taken at the LAVC Aquatic Center in Los Angeles, Calif. on Friday, March 24, 2023. (Jeremy Ruiz | Valley Star)

The Valley Star staff returned from the Journalism Association Community Colleges contest taking home 14 awards including the “General Excellence” award for the Valley Star newspaper and The Crown magazine.

Valley competed against 24 other community colleges in JACC's southern region, with colleges coming from Bakersfield to Chula Vista.

“It’s a big stepping stone,” said Griffin O’Rourke, who won five awards at the Oct. 21 event hosted by CSUC and served as the photo editor for the Valley Star and The Crown last semester. “It shows me that I can do this kind of work.”

O’Rourke, the current news editor for the CSUN’s Daily Sundial, won three individual awards, including first place for News Photo and honorable mentions for Action Sports Photo and Photo Story Essay. He also won two collective awards: second place with Isaac Dektor for Magazine Photo Story-Essay, and first place for Magazine Photo Story-Essay with Jeremy Ruiz, the Star’s current photo editor.

“I felt very proud of myself and of the people who helped me along the way,” O’Rouke said. “We had a very dedicated staff. Everyone helped each other, it was very teamwork-oriented.”

The first-place award for Magazine Photo Story-Essay won by O’Rourke and Ruiz is from a story of The Crown magazine called “Going Places at Steady Paces.” The story centers on the PACES program that sends STEM majors on outdoor expeditions to discover the ecosystems of Los Angeles, illustrated by photographs of the expeditions.

Apart from this collective award, Ruiz won fourth and first place for the Magazine Photo.

Ruiz’s winning photos focused on Valley swimmer Lilliana Noriega and they can be found in The Crown’s cover story: “Breaking records with Noriega.”

Current Valley Star editor-in-chief Milan Rafaelov took first place and honorable mention for their Editorial Cartoon. The cartoon shows Congress looking for Diane Feinstein and it accompanied the article “Constituents should call for Feinstein to resign,” available on the Valley Star website.

“Late last spring, I came into this newsroom with no prior knowledge or understanding of what I was getting myself into and now this semester I still have no idea what I’m doing as editor,” Rafaelov said. “Here, we’re all learning something new and to challenge what we think we’re capable of.”

Other members of the Valley Star staff took home awards from the contest at CSUN including Asher Miles who took fourth place for his Critical Review on the college’s production of Middletown. Former staffers Cassandra Nava (editor-in-chief) took home an honorable mention award for Magazine News Feature and Isaac Dektor (former editor-in-chief) took first place for Magazine Design.

“I am proud of our students and inspired by the staff that came before me,” Rafaelov said. “I plan to carry on the torch they lit and guide our students hopefully to more victories in the future.”