The Reporter Captures Back-To-Back National Pacemaker Awards

For the second year in a row, The Reporter has earned a national Pacemaker award, given to the top newspapers in the country.  

The Reporter was awarded the Pacemaker—considered by many to be college journalism’s equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize—in the two-year College Newspaper category at the 93rd Annual Associated Collegiate Press/College Media Association National College Media Convention in Philadelphia on Nov. 1.

“Winning a national award like the Pacemaker couldn’t be done without the combined efforts of an extremely talented and dedicated staff that The Reporter is lucky to have,” said Mark Pulaski, The Reporter’s editor-in-chief.

Pacemaker recipients were picked on the strength of coverage and content, quality of writing and reporting, leadership in the opinion page, evidence of in-depth reporting, design, photography, art and graphics. Judging for the award was based on newspapers published during the 2013-14 school year.

Reporters on last year’s staff tackled a varied pool of stories ranging from the poignant tale of an undocumented student who travels more than 100 miles a day to get to school to the horrific story of a Kendall Campus professor who was beaten up on campus and the heartwarming narrative of a baseball player who returned to the field after open heart surgery.

The Pacemaker honor comes two weeks after the paper was selected as the top state college newspaper in Florida for the fourth year in a  row by the Florida College System Publications Association. The Reporter has won 59 awards from the Florida College System Publications Association in the past four years alone including 35 first-place honors.

The accolades coincide with a string of accomplishments the paper and its alumni have enjoyed in recent years. Current students from the paper and recent alumni have either interned or been hired at The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Seattle Times, the Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, the Sun-Sentinel in Ft. Lauderdale and TV stations in Orlando, Fort Myers and Texas.

“The paper has and will continue to serve as a training ground for journalism’s next elite crop of talented reporters,” said Manolo Barco, the paper’s media adviser. “Our students are encouraged to think critically, seek the truth, and inform the student body at Miami Dade College.”