The Advocate: first in General Excellence

The Advocate staff traveled to Eugene last Friday and returned with seven awards at the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association’s 2016 Collegiate Day seminar/celebration.

Among them was the top prize: First place for General Excellence among all Oregon community college publications, based on cover-to-cover judging of three complete issues between October 2015 and this March.

It’s the second time in the last four years the Advocate has been so honored.

The all-day event began with a tour of University of Oregon’s recently renovated Allen Hall, home to the school’s journalism and communication programs.

Besides UO faculty presentations on public documents and sports journalism was a special presentation by editors and staff of Umpqua Community College’s student publication, The Mainstream.

Reporters and others at the Mainstream spoke of the trauma caused during the Oct. 1 mass shooting there, and the publication’s and their own reaction and efforts to heal, and help others with healing.

Led by 2015-16 Editor in Chief Adam Elwell, the Advocate earned the following awards:

Best Series: Second Place – MHCC bond coverage

Best Editorial: Third Place – Adam Elwell

Best Sports Photo: First Place – Beka Haugen

Best Graphic: First Place – Ayla Buckner

Best Cartooning: Second Place – Heather Golan

Best Spot News Photo: Second Place – Ben Baxter

General Excellence: First Place

Among the other publications attending the event: Portland State University (Vanguard), University of Oregon (Oregon Daily Emerald), Oregon State University (The Daily Barometer), University of Portland (The Beacon), Lane Community College (The Torch), Linn-Benton Community College (The Commuter), Umpqua Community College (The Mainstream) and Clackamas Community College (The Clackamas Print).

Members of The Advocate’s editorial board attended the event, which included compelling accounts of the UCC shooting last autumn by members of the The Mainstream. Trick Schneider, a Mainstream reporter, introduced the paper’s editorial board for comment on what happened on, and after, Oct. 1.

Alicia Graves, The Mainstream’s managing editor, began the presentation by explaining that she was supposed to be in the building that the shooting had happened – Snyder Hall. She said that she had been attending the college for one term and that Fall Term was her second. “I received a text [from her partner] and he was concerned – he told me to stay put, because he knew that I was usually in Snyder Hall.

“It was like my second home; I was always in Snyder Hall,” she said.

In the group Graves was hiding with, one of the students had contact with a family member who was part of the emergency response. “That student and I kind of became our group’s news source,” she said.

The Mainstream faculty adviser, Melinda Benton, explained that she was usually teaching in the classroom where the tragedy happened in – and had been for 20 years.

Benton said she had attended every campus safety meeting over the years and was concerned when she received a call from Vaughn Kness, one of The Mainstream’s reporters. The security measures for an “active shooter” scenario were not happening as they should have.

There was no web crawler that went across my screen in my email to alert me; no sound coming from my computer; and no (smartphone) call received,” Benton recalled. The alert system hadn’t gone as it was supposed to.

“When I realized what was going on, it felt like all of the air had left the room,” she said.

UCC closed for a week to allow students, staff, faculty and the community to mourn. “That first (next newspaper) issue was a nightmare,” Graves said. The school brought in comfort dogs for the students and tried to settle their nerves. “Writing (about) traumas is our own trauma,” Benton said.

Kness said that writing about the episode can “really open the wounds, and also heal it.”

To that end, the paper later integrated a comedy column to ease the pain. Columnist Brandon Taylor explained that he was there to make readers more happy and that he was happy that “there’s some shape of my personality out there, somewhere.”

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