The immersive project Turning Tides: The Story of the Salton Sea — produced in partnership between the student-led JOVRNALISM and The Desert Sun — won Online News Association’s Online Journalism Award for the student Pro-Am.

The Salton Sea project was produced by two USC Annenberg classes led by Prof. Robert Hernandez and Stuart Sender working alongside The Sun’s talented staff.

This project began when Greg Burton, the executive editor, and Sarah Day Owen, consumer experience director at the Palm Springs paper, approached Hernandez about a possible collaboration. The first meeting was held during the 2016 ONA conference in Denver.

More than a dozen students worked on this semester-long project, that included a trip to California’s largest lake during Spring Break.

In addition to being posted on the JOVRNALISM website and app, the immersive project has been published on The Sun’s site and USA TODAY’s VR mobile and Google DayDream app.

Winners will be announced at the ONA Conference and awards Banquet on Saturday, Oct. 7, in Washington, D.C.

According to the press release by ONA, “a group of 119 industry-leading journalists and new media professionals teamed up to screen 1,166 entries and select semi-finalists. Thirty judges representing a diverse cross-section of the industry then conferred to determine finalists and winners.”

Go here for the complete list of finalists and categories: https://awards.journalists.org/2017/08/24/2017-online-journalism-awards-finalists-announced/

JOVRNALISM, a registered trademark, was established by Hernandez in 2015 as part of his digital journalism course at USC Annenberg. It has produced diverse, immersive stories ranging from the Trump inauguration to the California Drought. While it has produced projects independently, it has also worked with news organizations like The New York Times, NPR, ProPublica, Reveal News/CIR and others.