Jennifer Burger, The Runner’s advisor, Sam Underwood, The Runner’s Editor-in-Chief, Edgar Noriega, The Runner’s Marketing Manager, Amy Pachla, The Runner’s Copy Chief, Erin Dailey, an Opinion columnist for the Runner, and Katie Goree, A Multimedia reporter for The Runner attended the Associate Collegiate Press (ACP) National Midwinter Journalism and the California College Media Association (CCMA) award ceremonies in San Francisco, CA on Feb. 29. 

   At the ACP awards ceremony, The Runner news website brought home 6th place honors, and The Runner’s magazine, Converge, came in 9th for Best in Show in their respective categories. 

    Along with the awards ceremonies, Underwood and Burger, held two workshops on building and maintaining a collaborative newsroom. 

 “Everybody gets to share ideas with each other. If we have individual departments working in a vacuum, not communicating and not collaborating with the rest of the newsroom, then that department is not going to benefit from the ideas and experiences from other people in the newsroom,” Underwood said. 

  At the CCMA awards banquet, The Runner brought home seven awards in the category of Four-Year Universities with Less than 15,000 students. 

   The Runner’s 2018-19 podcast team, Katie Goree and Eric Dean, took third place in Best Podcast for their professional interviews with CSU Bakersfield President Lynette Zelezny. Goree and Dean were able to sit with Zelezny and interview her about what would be next for CSUB student in the 2019-2020 school year in regards to student housing and the Rise Initiative.

  The Runner’s website, TheRunnerOnline.com, took third place in the category of Best Website. “Runner Nights,” a story covered by The Runner’s multimedia team, took third place in Best Multimedia Package. The Runner also took third place in the category of Best Non-News Video for current Managing Digital Editor Carlos Hernandez’s video of CSUB’s annual spirit rally. 

   Photographer Brianna Gutierrez brought home third place for her up-close photograph of an individual receiving a henna tattoo in the Best Feature Photo category. 

   Converge, The Runner’s magazine, took home two awards at the CCMA banquet. One was for Best Magazine Story, as Sarah Rhodes’s story on a midway game booth worker at the annual Kern County Fair won second place in the category. The other was for Best Magazine Cover Design, when Bre Parks’s design concept built around the work of CSUB art student Nacho was awarded first place. 

 “I couldn’t be more proud of my team,” Underwood said. 

Underwood is ready to move forward and grow with The Runner news team. 

  “I want to really push the visuals not only on the print, but I want to work with Carlos, our managing editor for digital, to see what we can do with the website to keep growing. The future of news is digital,” Underwood said. 

   Underwood hopes for The Runner to move away from the common cookie cutter news stories and approach more enterprise and investigative stories with his news team.