The Reporter And AXIS Win National Pacemaker Awards
Two Miami Dade College student publications—The Reporter and AXIS—were awarded prestigious national Pacemaker awards Thursday by the Associated Collegiate Press in the two-year college newspaper and literary arts magazine categories.
The awards, the top national prize given to college publications, were announced at the ACP/College Media Association Fall National College Media Convention that is being held virtually from Oct. 14-16.
“It’s unbelievable,” said Adriana Dos Santos, who served as The Reporter’s editor-in-chief last year. “It was a tough year, but we made it and we were thankfully rewarded for it.”
Judging for the awards was based on content produced and published during the 2020-21 school year.
“There was a lot of love and dedication that went into making the magazine,” said Izamara Zamora, who served as AXIS’ editor-in-chief during the 2020-21 school year. “Especially this year during COVID, a lot of us were going through a lot of personal turmoil and we think that it really reflected within [the volume].”
The award is AXIS’ third Pacemaker. The literary arts magazine at North Campus has been a finalist for the honor four straight years. It previously won the prize in 2018 and 2020.
“I’m really quite shocked and amazed by having won twice in a row,” said English professor Carmen Bucher, who serves as one of AXIS’ advisors. “The students worked hard and tirelessly on it and we are so proud of the work that they put into it.”
The Reporter, the college-wide newspaper at MDC, has been a Pacemaker finalist six of the last 11 years, including the last three, but it hadn’t won the prize since 2014. The paper, which was established in 2010, also won the award in 2013.
It was awarded this year’s prize largely based on its COVID-19 coverage and a string of articles on the College’s presidential search that ended with MDC selecting its first female president in the school’s 60-year history.
“The second I heard The Reporter’s name, my heart started beating out of my chest,” said Ammy Sanchez, the paper’s current editor-in-chief. “I’m in awe to see that the work and sleepless nights our team and former editor-in-chief put in led to something this amazing.”
In addition, Urbana, the literary arts magazine at the Eduardo J. Padrón Campus was awarded an Innovation Pacemaker. They won based on their social media growth, creation of their blog, podcast about sustainability, advocacy page, artivism festival and seven days of action campaign they held.
The magazine also won two individual awards: Ashlie Rodriguez won first place in the Multimedia Story of the Year (blog category) for her piece Pelo Malo: An Afro-Latina Experience and Gabriela Villas and Jeidy Gonzalez placed third in the Best Use of Social Media: Social Media Promotion category.
“We are very excited because we worked very hard to innovate a lot with our social media, our podcasts and even our print,” said Laura Santos-Somohano, who was Urbana’s co-editor-in-chief last year. “There’s a lot of things that we changed and our hard work paid off.”
Ammy Sanchez contributed to this story.
