College of San Mateo Journalism students captured top honors at a Northern California journalism conference held Oct. 11 at San Jose State University, with one winning article later published by the San Francisco Examiner and distributed online.

The students were honored for their work with a General Excellence award for the Web site version of The San Matean, the campus newspaper, and several writing awards, including a meritorious award for in-depth reporting.

Christine Karavas, editor of The San Matean, was awarded first place for opinion writing in an on-the-spot competition held at the daylong event. Her article addressed a keynote address about journalism and social media event’s and was written under strict deadline pressure in competition with other students.

Her article was polished and distributed several days later by the San Francisco Examiner. It addresses the differences between journalism and social media under the headline “Don’t fool yourself: Blogs, texts are not journalism.”

The conference was hosted by the Journalism Association of Community Colleges, a statewide organization. The JACC holds Northern California and Southern California conferences and a larger state conference each spring that brings both regions together.

About 225 students from 22 community colleges attended the event, which presented an array of workshops and competitions.

In the mail-in competition, judging work over the last year, Karavas also earned fourth place news feature honors for her story about changes to language and writing caused by text messaging. “Well written, great flow, great/new topic,” the judges wrote.

Also collecting awards were:

• Colleen Shjeflo, meritorious award in enterprise story/series category, for her in-depth report about the use of firearms by college security officers. “Interesting topic in light of Virginia Tech massacre,” the judges wrote. “Story does a good job of exploring the pros and cons of having armed police on campus with statistics and comments. Good job of looking at the issue from a state and district perspective.”

• Peter Jadelrab, third place in profile feature, for his article about an Iraqi war veteran returning to college. “One of the things that really works well in this story is the way you focused on a single incident during the war instead of trying to fit in all his experience,” the judges wrote.

• Emily Daly, fourth place in newswriting, for her story about the slaying of a Cañada College student

• Danny Castro, honorable mention in sports game story, for his game coverage

“CSM’s journalism students work hard to excel, so it’s terrific to see their efforts acknowledged by the professionals who judge for the JACC,” said Ed Remitz, CSM journalism adviser. Remitz also is a board member for the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club.