By: NCC Staff
The Olympian, Olympic College’s student-produced newspaper, won 25 awards Saturday in the 2011 Washington Community College Journalism Association’s Excellence in Journalism Competition, including first place in the Publications Sweeps category for most overall points.
In all, 11 OC students were recognized for their work published March 2010-March 2011 at an awards luncheon held at Edmonds Community College.
The Washington Community College Journalism Association was co-founded in 2007 by Mike Parks of Pierce College and Jeb Wyman, former faculty adviser to Seattle Central’s 42-year-old student paper, The City Collegian.
Seattle Central hosted the awards in 2007 and 2008, at the time the largest-ever gatherings of Washington community college student journalists. The City Collegian took top honors, the Publications Sweeps award, at the 2008 WCCJA competition.
Within weeks of the awards, however, the Collegian’s newsroom was gutted and occupied by Student Leadership, the dean of Student Leadership revoked the paper’s budget, and the college administration cancelled all journalism classes.
In March of this year, the new administration at Seattle Central formally refused to reinstate journalism classes and The City Collegian, which remains shut down.
Christopher Carter, former editor-in-chief of The Olympian and current University of Washington student, took first place in the Individual Sweeps category with six awards. Carter won first place in Illustrations; second place in Feature Photo, Feature Reporting and Best Use of Multimedia; and honorable mention in Personality Profile and News Reporting.
Clayton Pettay won first place in Column/Commentary and Tyler Kendig took first place in Portrait Photo.
The Olympian staff won first, second and honorable mention in the Staff Editorials category.
Olympic College takes top WCCJA honors
John Rodriquez took second place in Illustrations and third place in News Photo. Rodriquez also won honorable mention in Page Design and Stand Alone Photo.
Bryce Weller and Josh Nothnagle won second place for Best Website. Nothnagle, editor-in-chief of The Olympian, also won honorable mention in the News Photo category.
Keegan Stierle took third place in Sports Feature Reporting.
Kevin Doucette won honorable mention in the Sports News Reporting and Sports Feature Reporting categories, Sarah Homeyer took honorable mention in Editorial Cartoons and Kaylee Woods won honorable mention in Comprehensive Coverage.
Jon Miller, former editor-in-chief of The Olympian and OC/Old Dominion graduate, took honorable mention for Sports News Reporting.
The Olympian staff includes Thomas James, a former student at Seattle Central, who now attends Olympic College to pursue his journalism education. OC offers classes in news writing, AP style, and photojournalism.
Although Seattle Central shut down its student newspaper, thriving student papers exist at Peninsula, Shoreline, Edmonds, Everett, Green River, Highline, Olympic, Pierce, Bellevue, Centralia, and Spokane Falls community colleges.
