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California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) senior Stefan Agregado has been named the national winner of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) 2011 Mark of Excellence Award for breaking news photography.<\/p>\n
Titled \u201cCSU students arrested in protest,\u201d the photograph (pictured above), framed between the legs of a California State University (CSU) police officer, shows two female students face down on the ground being handcuffed by CSU police officers. The shot was taken at a CSU Board of Trustees meeting last November where students and other protestors were speaking out about the CSU raising tuition and the state\u2019s disinvestment in higher education.<\/p>\n
Each year, the SPJ announces the national winners of its Mark of Excellence Awards, recognizing collegiate work published or broadcasted. This year, student journalists submitted more than 4,000 entries. From there, National Mark of Excellence Award judges choose one national winner in each category and two national finalists (runners-up).<\/p>\n
A photographer for CSULB\u2019s student newspaper, the Daily 49er<\/em>, Agregado and the other first-place national winners will be recognized at the Excellence in Journalism 2012 conference in September in Fort Lauderdale. First-place national winners, including Agregado\u2019s winning photo, are showcased on SPJ\u2019s website.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen my advisors at the paper told me about (the award), I could hardly react. I didn\u2019t know what to say,\u201d said Agregado, a 22-year-old art major with an emphasis in photography and a minor in journalism. \u201cI\u2019m not used to the recognition I suppose, and I never dreamed I would win nationals. I had no expectations of hearing anything from SPJ ever again. All I could say was \u2018thank you\u2019 and just soak it in.\u201d<\/p>\n Agregado recalled getting the assignment to shoot the meeting from his editors, and he wasn\u2019t looking forward to it at all. He had shot CSU Board of Trustees meetings previously, and he described them as boring. This, however, was not the usual board of trustees meeting.<\/p>\n Agregado started out the assignment in the meeting room. He said the protestors were subtle at first, but when the open forum began, they became so loud and distracting that they were all kicked out of the meeting. That\u2019s when the story started to change.<\/p>\n \u201cThe protestors felt their free speech rights were being challenged. I agreed with the decision to kick them out. They were really obnoxious and started ranting about things that didn\u2019t pertain to the meeting at all,\u201d he recalled. \u201cThe girls in the photo shoved the officers so hard that they fell down and that\u2019s when the cops started arresting people. From there, everything happened too fast to really think, but I knew that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I was not going to waste it.”<\/p>\n Winners and finalists were previously recognized by receiving first place in one of the SPJ\u2019s 12 regional competitions. Each first-place regional winner advanced to the national competition.<\/p>\n Agregado, who expects to graduate from CSULB in December, captured three first-place honors at the California College Media Association awards event on April 21 for spot news photography, best photo series, and best sports photo. Earlier in the month, his photo was selected as the SPJ Region 11 (Arizona, California, Hawaii and Nevada) winner in the best news photography category, a win that put his shot in the national competition.<\/p>\n Agregado wants to be a photographer or a teacher after he graduates in December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) senior Stefan Agregado has been named the national winner of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) 2011 Mark of Excellence Award for breaking news photography.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":69694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4593\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4593"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4593"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/winningbreak.jpg\")
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