What if you could take a journalism vacation, one in which you learned new skills in every area of journalism and were actually able to put these new skills to the test?
You can, and we are. It’s called the Journalism Association of Community Colleges State Convention, a yearly three-day event that draws more than 600 student journalism students from around California (and beyond). This year, the event is in Burbank and as of this writing, we’re on day two. Skyline’s group of 7 students has been taking advantage of everything the convention has to offer:
- Two students, Blair Hardee and Terence Chin, won scholarships from JACC on Thursday night.
- Each student has entered at least one competition here, such as opinion, news, broadcast or feature writing, copy editing, sports writing and sports photo, editorial cartoon, and video journalism, among other contests.
- They heard from keynote speakers, LA Times reporters Ruben Vives and Jeff Gottlieb, who both won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking the Bell salary scandal.
- They’ve signed up for writing and design critiques, which allows them to sit down with a media professional who will go over their writing or page design and help them improve in a one-on-one session.
- They’re headed out to tours of local media outlets, where they’ll go onsite to see how things function in the “real world.”
- At least one student will be participating in a hands-on tutorial where students will have a chance to be on-camera reporters.
- They attended workshops on how to get internships and jobs, how to use social media, how to write better opinion pieces, how to make it in broadcasting and more.
- They tweeted, took photos, networked, and wrote notes.
- They did everything but sleep!
Wish you were here!
Skyline College Journalism Department Blog 
wow, sounds like there was a lot more offered to the students this year. you lucky ducks better have made the most of it!
They did make the most of it! A good time was had by all.