Pacemaker Awards – Hello, copy editor?

A typical scene between sessions at the ACP convention: highly caffeinated and motivated student journalists hungry to learn tools of the trade, digital and otherwise.

Beacon Opinions Editor Philip Ellefson, Editor-in-Chief Kelsey Thomas and me before the Pacemaker awards ceremony on the final day of the convention. One of the reasons we went to the convention was that The Beacon was named a finalist.

None of us expected The Beacon to win. And it didn’t. But we were honestly thrilled just to be finalists, which entitled us to a shiny plaque. There was a small problem, though.

PS- Paging copy editor: Portland, Pennsylvania?

You can see the list of Pacemaker winners here.

–Nancy Copic

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The Beacon is keeping some fine company these days

It started with a tweet from Ryan Frank, publisher at Emerald Media Group, which publishes the University of Oregon’s student newspaper and website, The Daily Emerald. Editor-in-Chief of The Beacon Kelsey Thomas saw that, and set off her own flurry of tweets…“Yay” is right. The Beacon is a finalist for the Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker Award, a national award that’s been given out for 86 years and widely considered to be the most prestigious award in college media. 

There are three categories: daily newspaper,  non-daily newspaper and two-year (community college) newspapers. The Beacon, in the non-daily category, is in impressive company.

Among the 22 colleges and universities whose student newspapers are finalists for the non-daily Pacemaker Award:  Massachusetts Institute of Technology,  Boston College, George Washington University, University of Oregon, Wake Forest University, Johns Hopkins University, and Washington University in St. Louis. Not too shabby.

Finalists in the daily category include Northwestern University, Harvard, Penn State, University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers, and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. You get the idea.

According to ACP, the staff of the esteemed Miami Herald judged this year’s entries on:

• coverage and content
• quality of writing and reporting
• leadership on the opinion page
• evidence of in-depth reporting
• layout and design
• photography, art and graphics

You can read more about the judges’ criteria here.

Pacemaker winners in the non-daily category in recent years include student newspapers from University of Chicago, Boston College, Washington University, Santa Clara University, Butler University, Loyola Marymount University, San Francisco State University and Villanova University.

The Associated Collegiate Press will announce this year’s Pacemaker winners at the ACP convention in New Orleans on Oct. 26.

Yay!

-Nancy Copic, Adviser to The Beacon

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