Two Miami Dade College publications—The Reporter, Miami Dade College’s collegewide student newspaper, and Urbana, the Eduardo J. Padrón Campus’ literary & arts magazine—won national Pacemaker awards.
Considered by many as the Pulitzer Prize of collegiate student media, the honor recognizes overall excellence of student work. This year’s contest featured work produced during the 2022-2023 school year.
Winners were announced at the 2023 Associated College Press/College Media Association Fall National College Media Convention in Atlanta, Georgia on Oct. 30.
The Reporter received the honor for the third consecutive year in the two-year student newspaper category. It has won five Pacemakers—2013, 2014, 2021, 2022 and 2023—since its inception in 2010.
“It’s amazing to be able to contribute to The Reporter‘s long-standing legacy of excellence,” said Juan S. Gomez, who served as the paper’s editor-in-chief last school year when the entries were submitted. “It’s not easy to win a Pacemaker, so the fact we’ve done it for three years in a row goes to show the quality of our work.”
Notable stories featured in the three issues submitted for judging include: the Tower Theater protests, Urbana starting a new chapter after winning its first Magazine Pacemaker award and a story on the director of TRIO support services getting a second chance at life after receiving a kidney transplant.
Urbana, which entered its 16th volume in the two-year literary arts magazine category, was the only publication among five finalists to receive the award in that division this year.
The magazine, which was led by co-editors Nicole Viloria and Maria Alejandra Albarracin, received the honor for the second year in a row. In 2021, the publication also won an Innovation Pacemaker for their creative efforts to disseminate information across their communities.
Last year’s theme—collage—was explored through a medley of poems, short stories, languages, photographs and digital illustrations to showcase different entities coming together to represent a greater whole.
Volume 16 featured works such as Jenna Kay Dubé’s poem Through the Eyes of a Child coupled with a photograph of a boy laughing at the beach titled Laughter Overflow by Viloria, and a short story by Erika Hernández entitled Rosie’s Lovely Day Out, paired with a photograph of a tree by Joseph Muñoz and an illustration of a dog on a field by Camila Ramirez.
“This [Pacemaker] is significant because it’s the highest honor for collegiate writing and it’s also something that we put a lot of work into,” said Leidy Padrino, who is Urbana’s editor-in-chief this year. “I know myself and the rest of the staff that worked on 16, we were working until the very last minute. The editors-in-chief of that volume, especially, had a very long and hard job to do. But just to be a part of that and to see all the efforts we put in be rewarded, it was incredible.”
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