In February 2024, The Octagon submitted articles published during 2023 for the California News Publishers Association’s California Journalism Awards, a statewide competition honoring California print news. The results were announced on July 13.
The Octagon won the most awards in the campus publications division, competing against colleges as varied as Santa Rosa Junior College, San José State University and Stanford University, and won more awards than The Sacramento Bee.
In the “Columns” category, Ishaan Sekhon, ’24, won first place, senior Aaryan Gandhi won second place and Lauren Lu, ’24, won third place.
In the “Enterprise News Story or Series” category, senior Ava Eberhart won first place, senior Saheb Gulati and junior Zema Nasirov won second place and senior Garrett Xu and junior Rebecca Lin won third place.
In the “Coverage of Student Government and Campus Administration” category, Samhita Kumar, ’23, and Garrett won first place and Garman Xu, ’23, won third place.
In the “Profile Story” category, Lu won first place and Eberhart won third.
In the “Writing” category, Lu won first place, Eberhart and junior Eesha Dhawan won third place and Lu and Gulati won fifth place.
Junior Rehan Afzal won first place in the “Feature Photo” category and second place in the “News Photo” category.
Adam Akins, ’23, and Nasirov won fourth place in the “Sports Action Photo” category.
Brynne Barnard-Bahn, ’23, won first place in the “Illustration” category and Lu won fifth.
The Octagon won first place in “Online General Excellence” under the management of Siri Atluri, ’24, Eberhart, Lu and Garrett.
The Octagon also won first place in “General Excellence” under the management of Garman, Akins, Kumar and Simone DeBerry, ’23, earning The Octagon a $1,000 prize.
Overall, the publication won 21 total awards, including five additional first-place prizes, one second-place award, three third-place awards, one fourth-place award and two fifth-place awards.
Eberhart, Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Octagon, won two first-place prizes and two third-place prizes.
Eberhart helped select article and photo submissions from the 2023 academic year alongside former Co-Editor-in-Chief and Lu as well as current Co-Editors-in-Chief Garrett and Nasirov.
“We just wanted to get a diverse selection of stories, get a lot of names in there, a lot of people on our staff and just whichever ones we felt got a lot of interaction from our community,” Eberhart said.
After the initial process, they reviewed their choices with the rest of The Octagon’s staff before submitting the selected pieces.
Five months later, the results were announced. When The Octagon’s staff were notified of their awards at bootcamp, Eberhart was proud of her fellow staff. “It was Lauren, Garrett and my first year being EIC’s, and it was kind of scary going into it. So it was really validating knowing that we did something right,” she said.
Andrea Todd, adviser for The Octagon, was also excited by the staff’s success.
“It was my first year as adviser. I had no clue what to do. Ava did all the work and walked me through the process. Still, I was a proud momma bear when I saw that award tally,” Todd said.
— Maddy Schank
