At an event held at San Francisco State University Friday, Oct. 14, 11 current and former Experience staff members took home 25 awards across various categories.
Former editors-in-chief Juan Cebreiros and Michael Benedian led the Experience newspaper to win General Excellence for the 2022-23 school year. They also won a Meritorious award for their work covering an incident that happened on the college campus last Fall that ultimately went viral on TikTok.
Current editor-in-chief Aliyah Ramirez finished second place for Inside Page Layout for a page design on a Student Art show, as well as third place in Feature Photo of a picture of a student performing at the last Spring Talent Show. She also took home an honorable mention for her Opinion Story “Finding a voice like mine.”
Current Experience managing editor Mohammad Najimi won first place in Photo Illustration and third place in Inside Page Layout for his double truck layout project where he had the Los Medanos College Baseball team talk about their baseball heroes when they were growing up.
Former Photo Editor Katherine Mustar won five photography awards overall including three first place awards in the Feature Photo, Sports Feature Photo and Sports Feature Photo categories. She also won a third first place award in Photo Story-Essay on a project she did on how the LMC baseball team prepares for a baseball game. Lastly, she won third place in news photo for the Pi Day event.
Former staff writer Noah Cannon won two honorable mentions for his Critical Review on “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3” and two other articles on the state of cinema and the fourth Toy Story movie.
The Experience’s podcast “Exposition” brought home a fourth place award in the Podcast/Audio News category for their interview with Philosophy Professor Edward Haven. Former podcast host Tatihn Mellieon finished in second place for a pair of columns on the war in Ukraine and, “Trans people are not the problem.” Simms also won third place in Critical Review for his opinion article on the new sound of Lil Yachty.
There were also on-the-spot competitions held at the conference with Najimi placing third in the copyediting contest, Cebreiros placing fourth in news writing and Jordan Suisala receiving an honorable mention for her opinion piece. Suisala and Cebreiros’ contests were both on the topic of an opening keynote held by California Capital Correspondent Eytan Wallace.
Advisor Cindy McGrath gave her praise to the Experience staff for their hard work, despite their few members.
“I am proud of the work they do to follow their dreams of working in a free-press field that supports democracy in America,” McGrath said.
