Monday, October 16, 2006
This past weekend, La Voz walked away with twenty awards from the Northern California Journalism Association of Community Colleges.
Our awards ranged from a fourth place prize to James Schulte for column writing to a “General Excellence” award for lavozdeanza.com.
Although we are very proud of the JACC awards we have won over the years, we shouldn’t spend too much time patting ourselves on the back. When we look back at our accomplishments as a newspaper, we should also take time to think of our weaknesses.
La Voz has been criticized at times for being sensationalistic, inaccurate, or biased. Sometimes, these characterizations were completely justified.
Readers should always remember, though, that this is a student-run newspaper. We’re not perfect. We work at La Voz instead of the New York Times or The San Francisco chronicle because we’re still learning our craft.
We hope to make all of our rookie mistakes here before we go into the professional world of journalism. However, just because we’re students, that doesn’t mean we can make excuses for shoddy journalism or poor effort.
We expect and encourage the De Anza community to hold us accountable if they don’t think our work is up to par. La Voz is always willing to listen to reasonable criticism of our newspaper.
Every letter to the editor, whether it’s published or not, is read by La Voz. Although it’s never fun when someone points out our failures, we are always willing to learn from our mistakes.
La Voz is supposed to be “The Voice of De Anza College,” not the voice of two dozen or so journalism students. That means the De Anza community must play an active role in this newspaper by not only reading but contributing, as well.
We wish we could know everything that happens at every moment on this campus. But, of course, that’s impossible. If you don’t tell us what is going on, we might miss something. La Voz staff members, although highly dedicated, have other classes, outside jobs, and personal lives, just like other students.
So some of the responsibility falls to you – the news readers and news makers – to share with us how you feel and what you would like to see in your college newspaper.
We don’t spend countless unpaid hours creating this newspaper every week just to see our names in print. We are here to provide useful and interesting information to the De Anza community.
If we’re not doing our job, we hope you’ll let us know.