The UTD Mercury Wins Its First Pacemaker Award At Associated Collegiate Press Convention

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Oct. 31, 2005) – The UTD Mercury, the student newspaper at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), captured four national awards – including The Pacemaker Award, an honor reserved for the top college newspapers in the United States – at the 2005 Associated Collegiate Press (ACP) convention in Kansas City, Mo., Oct. 26 to 30.

The Pacemaker, which was established in 1926 and is considered the ACP’s highest honor, is awarded on the basis of quality and depth of writing and reporting, as well as demonstrated excellence in design, photography and advertising. This marks the biweekly UTD Mercury’s first Pacemaker Award in the 25-year history of the student newspaper.

The UTD Mercury, edited by Cristen Perkowski, an interdisciplinary studies senior from Plano, Texas, earned the award for the 2004-05 academic year along with newspapers from 24 other four-year colleges and universities across the United States and Canada. Other 2005 Pacemaker Award recipients included Auburn University, the University of Kansas and Pepperdine University, among others.

In addition to the Mercury’s winning the prestigious Pacemaker Award, three of the paper’s staffers were honored with individual national awards at the Kansas City conference.

They included:

• Michelle Gruben (cartoonist) — second place, cartoon strip/panel;
• Luke McKenzie (managing editor) — third place, cartoon strip/panel;
• Anjie Vichayanonda (advertising manager) — second place, house ad design.

This is the fourth consecutive year The Mercury has received major honors at an ACP convention.

“The Pacemaker Award represents the pinnacle of excellence in collegiate press circles. The Mercury staff certainly has demonstrated the effort and expertise worthy of this distinction,” said Jay Miller, student media adviser. “The UTD community is fortunate to be served by the reporters and editors who are dedicated to producing a readable and interesting paper that adheres to high journalistic standards.”

This year’s convention originally was scheduled to be held in New Orleans, La., and the competition was to be judged by staffers at The New Orleans Times-Picayune. Hurricane Katrina forced the convention to be moved to Kansas City, and the work of the finalists for the Pacemaker Award was sent to Minnesota, where it was judged by staffers of The St. Paul Pioneer-Press.

ACP is a division of the National Scholastic Press Association. It is the largest and oldest membership organization for college student journalists in the United States and Canada.  

About UTD

The University of Texas at Dallas, located at the convergence of Richardson, Plano and Dallas in the heart of the complex of major multinational technology corporations known as the Telecom Corridor®, enrolls nearly 14,500 students. The school’s freshman class traditionally stands at the forefront of Texas state universities in terms of average SAT scores. The university offers a broad assortment of bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degree programs. For additional information about UTD, please visit the university’s website at www.utdallas.edu.