TommieMedia, the student-run news publication at St. Thomas, has been awarded an Online Pacemaker Award in the four-year schools category from the Associated Collegiate Press.
The Online Pacemaker Award recognizes TommieMedia as a publication of general excellence for its website. TommieMedia was selected based on the following criteria: coverage and content, quality of writing and reporting, leadership, design, photography and graphics. Receiving this national award honors the skills and dedication of TommieMedia’s 40-plus journalists, editors, videographers, designers and strategic communication staffers.
“I am thrilled to be part of a staff and organization that is nationally recognized. It is very rewarding to see that all of our dedication to journalism has paid off,” said current director Samantha HoangLong. “The amount of breaking news we have covered has been an excellent learning experience and clearly it has been worth it.”
TommieMedia is one of 16 student-run publications nationwide granted the Online Pacemaker Award. Other recipients of this award consisted of large universities such as the University of Alabama, the University of California, Los Angeles and Duke University. Winners were announced at the Fall National College Media Convention Nov. 2 in Washington, D.C. It is the second Pacemaker in the organization’s 10-year history. TommieMedia won a Pacemaker award in 2010.
“It’s really satisfying to be recognized, especially among so many prestigious schools. We’re definitely the underdog in a competition like that,” Solveig Rennan, spring 2019 director of TommieMedia, said. “We’ve established a culture of really good journalism.”
A series of breaking news stories contributed to the award, including the university receiving a bomb threat, a forced removal from the MIAC conference and exposing instances of blackface in the university’s archives.
