“Bat” staff members win eight awards
Published or Revised April 11, 2006
bat-winners.jpg
Members of the staff of the PJC student newspaper, The Bat, visited the Alamo last Friday during a break in Texas Intercollegiate Press Association activities. Staffers brought home eight awards from the San Antonio conference. Pictured from left are: (front) Amy Branham, Bethany Vaughn, Mindy Riffle, (back) Jo Kyle Varner and Jesse Hausler.
The staff of the Paris Junior College student newspaper, [i]The Bat[/i], won a total of eight awards Saturday at the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association (TIPA) conference in San Antonio where they competed in both live competition and in contests of previously published work from the past year.
Amy Branham, co-editor of [i]The Bat[/i], was awarded a $400 scholarship in addition to a first place in illustration and an honorable mention for editorial cartoon in the previously published contest. She also won an honorable mention for editorial cartoon in the live contest.
Also winning awards in the previously published contests were staff members Jesse Hausler, second place in editorial writing and third place in news feature writing; and Bethany Vaughn, honorable mention in news photography.
"I am consistently proud of our current and former journalism students and their TIPA performances," said Sharon Dennehy, journalism instructor and [i]Bat[/i] adviser. "At this conference, they get the chance to practice the skills they have learned in class and they are rewarded for excellence and, over and over again, they come away winners."
Last year's [i]Bat[/i] editor, Joey Dean, now on the staff of [i]The East Texan[/i] at Texas A&M-Commerce, won second place in sports news writing and honorable mention in headline writing in the previously published contest for work he did when he was at PJC. For his work on [/i]The East Texan[/i], he won a second place in headline writing, a third place in sports feature writing, a second place in feature photo, and an honorable mention in critical review. He also won an honorable mention for feature photography in the live contest.
More than 500 students and faculty advisers from both two- and four-year colleges attended this year's conference where they heard both independent gubernatorial hopefuls Kinky Friedman and Carole Strayhorn speak. San Antonio television station WOAI's 10 p.m. news featured brief footage of Strayhorn visiting with Hausler at the TIPA conference.
Bat staffers Jo Kyle Varner and Mindy Riffle competed in sports writing and sports photography and attended a Rampage hockey game.
