What's Up With Faculty
The Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter, awarded Professor Venise Wagner and journalist Sally Lehrman the Distinguished Service Award for 2019. Lehrman and Wagner wrote Reporting Inequality: Tools and Methods for Covering Race and Ethnicity, which was published earlier this year by Routledge. The Distinguished Service award is for the advancement and advocacy of journalism and is one of six that the SPJ Board of Directors determines each year. Reporting Inequality offers new frameworks for covering the root causes of racial disparity and provides readers with tools and methods for uncovering what are often the invisible gears of inequality. The book also includes best practices and case studies from journalists who write about the policies and practices that lead to racially disparate outcomes in health, education, immigration, wealth and housing.
Associate Professor Jesse Garnier also went home that night with an award from SPJ. Garnier, founder and CEO of SFBay.ca, won the award for best web and mobile design. Judges cited the website's "clear, concise design" that offers "easy access to local news and information."
SFBay.ca also won top honors at the 42nd San Francisco Press Club banquet in the digital media category. For the second-straight year, and for the third time in five years, SFBay.ca was honored with first place for overall excellence in digital media.
SF State Journalism faculty, alumni and students earned 23 awards in the competition.
Lecturer Scot Tucker and alumnus Ching Wong each swept digital media categories for photography for SFBay.ca, with Tucker earning first place in sports photography, and Wong scoring top recognition for news photography, feature photography, and photo series. Alumnus Jerold Chinn won first place for continuing coverage, honoring his work at SFBay.ca on transit and transportation, while Brian Neumann earned his first SFPC award with third place for digital news story.
Alumnus Michael Barba was honored with his second Bill Workman News Writer Award for best daily newspaper story of the year for the San Francisco Examiner's story "SF paramedic accused of choking woman, officer fired for alleged cover-up." Joe FItzgerald Rodriguez received first place in daily columns for "On Guard" in the Examiner, while Ida Mojadad earned top news story honors with “Who Judges the Judges? We Do.” for SF Weekly.
Journalists from El Tecolote, helmed by alumnus Alexis Terrazas, earned 15 awards, with eight going to SF State Journalism students and alumni. Destiny Arroyo, Alejandro Galicia Diaz, Jessika Karlsson and Maria Puras Arauzo each earned first place in their categories, with Terrazas, Adelyna Tirado, Amarah Hernandez, and Amanda Peterson also earning recognition.
The Journalism Department's newest hire, Assistant Professor Josh Davis, spoke to students from around the country at the Associated Collegiate Press-College Media Association National College Media Convention in Washington, D.C. Oct. 31-Nov. 3. At the conference, Davis presented his work at VICE News Tonight for a featured talk, "Reimagining Broadcast News," and he led a pre-convention workshop, "Storytelling for Video Journalists.
Associate Professor Cristina L. Azocar (‘93) and Assistant Professor of Apparel Design & Merchandising/Textiles Ivana Markova, won a top faculty paper award in the LGBTQ division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication for their paper "News Media, Body Image and Culture: Influence on Body Image and Body Attitude in Men." The paper was presented at the annual conference in August in Toronto.
Journalism Department Chair Rachele Kanigel served as co-chair of the Associated Collegiate Press-College Media Association National College Media Convention in Washington, D.C. Oct. 31-Nov. 3. As co-chair with Kelley Lash, director of student media at Rice University, Kanigel planned nearly 250 educational sessions. More than 1,600 students and college media advisers from around the U.S. and Canada, including 11 SF State journalism students and three faculty, attended the event. Kanigel and Lash are both past presidents of College Media Association.
Kanigel also presented a paper, "Creating a 21st Century Mass Communication Curriculum for a New Democracy: Lessons from Bhutan" at the World Journalism Education Congress in Paris in July.