Assuming beautiful sunny weather, yet being disappointed with smog illuminating off the buildings that tower over the numerous college students below. If you didn’t already know, many of the students from the Skyline View staff took off for Los Angeles on April 3, 2008 for the 53rd State Convention known as JACC.

JACC, Journalism Association of Community Colleges, this year was held at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles, California. The dates for the convention were from April 3 to April 5.

This convention presented many opportunities to inspiring journalists from various community colleges all over the country. This convention offered over 70 workshops and 13 on-the-spot competitions.Skyline and several other schools had a chance to network with other students, learn many new skills and compete. Not only did they have on-the-spot competitions, they also had some bring-in contests and portfolio work turned in.

To start off the evening, keynote speaker, Russ Stanton, editor of the Los Angeles Times spoke to the students about the benefits of JACC. He told us that newspapers are dying out and to compete in the field you must have a well rounded knowledge of computers. However, he still encouraged students not to give up or change their major.

Workshops began right after the speech. Overall the workshops focused on the following: photography, advertisement, ethics, review, blogs, cartoons, magazine edit, interview, online journalism, broadcast, and various other types.

Continental breakfasts were offered both Friday April 4 and Saturday April 5 morning. Prizes were given to those that attended 12 workshops/competitions or met with 12 vendors.

Many of the workshops frightened some students by informing them that newspapers are fading away and the internet is rising. They also spoke about how this struggle has lead to the loss of many jobs.

However, other speakers kept the students spirits up by believing that this generation and the ones after us will have to improve the way news is reported and find a better way to entertain people.

On the night of April 5, dinner and dessert was provided to all students. Awards were given to several students that won writing, photo, drawing, layout, or copy editing competitions.

As the Skyline View staff, we went not only representing ourselves, but Skyline College as a whole. We gained knowledge to produce a better paper and online stories to attract more readers. We also had a chance to build connections between Skyline and many other community colleges.

Overall it was an amazing inspiring convention that not only made us closer as a staff, but also more knowledgeable with what to provide our readers.