El Vaquero, Irvine High School’s award-winning student newspaper, recently took second place in the Southern California Journalism Education Association State Write-Offs.
Twenty-eight schools and 215 students from Orange and L.A. counties competed in the statewide journalism competition, which was held March 15 at Rancho Dominguez Preparatory School in Long Beach. In the end, our local heroes were edged out by the student-journos from Redondo Union High School. But Irvine High was the only Orange County school to place in the top five in the overall Newspaper Sweepstakes category, according to adviser Julie Braun.
Participating El Vaquero staffers included Alex Williams, Clara Baik, Melanie Sakurada, Alex Thompson, Sally Oh, Joseph Kim, Anissa Govind, Saieashwar Mukund, Marwa Achikzai, Sreyas Samantula, Jessica Lin, Tracy Nguyen, Jennifer Shin, Trixie Adjie and Jenny Seo.
El Vaquero placed first in the Orange County Journalism Education Association Write-Offs’s in February and has quite a successful track record at the state level, earning top honors in 2000, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012.