The Renegade Rip, Bakersfield College’s student newspaper, earned general excellence for the 2011-12 school year during an awards banquet Oct. 6 at the Journalism Association of Community Colleges Southern California Regional Conference at Cal State Fullerton.

The general excellence award, judged by professional journalists in a mail-in competition, is achieved when a newspaper earns a certain amount of points based on content, page design, photography and balance of coverage.

Along with the overall newspaper award, several individuals on The Rip won awards in the mail-in competition.

Zak Cowan, the editor in chief during the past school year, won six individual awards.

At the two-day conference, students participated in workshops, on-the-spot competitions and were able to talk to representatives from four-year schools about transferring.

Award Winners

General excellence for in-depth enterprise coverage – Zak Cowan, Jon Nelson and Keith Kaczmarek (for a series of stories on the budget issues)

FIRST THROUGH FOURTH PLACE (plaques)

Zak Cowan, first place and third place for editorial writing

Zak Cowan and Angie DelGado, second place, inside page layout broadsheet

Esteban Ramirez, second place, sports game story

Zak Cowan, fourth place, online photo essay

Zak Cowan, front page layout

HONORABLE MENTIONS 

(certificates)

Greg Cook, sports feature photo

Breanna Fields, news feature story

Jon Nelson, magazine opinion story

Omar Oseguera, magazine profile feature story

Zak Cowan, front page layout

Martin Chang, feature photo

Martin Chang, column writing

ON THE SPOT

Martin Chang, second place, opinion