Fall is an exciting time at ACP as we announce award winners from the previous school year while preparing for the upcoming year.
Congratulations to the ACP 2018 Newspaper Pacemaker finalists and the 2018 Online Pacemaker finalists announced recently. Also, kudos to the 2017 Yearbook Pacemaker finalists announced in March. The ACP Magazine Pacemaker finalists will be announced at the end of this month.
The winners will be announced at the ACP Pacemaker Awards Ceremony at 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 27 at the ACP/CMP Fall National College Media Convention in Louisville, Ky.
Starting next week, the finalists for the ACP Individual Awards will be announced over the course of several days, wrapping up in early October. The ACP Individual Awards will also be presented at the fall convention.
While announcing 2018 finalists, we have also been busy preparing for 2019. This summer, an advisory committee spent two days digging into all the ACP Individual Awards resulting in updates and additions to the 2019 lineup.
At the Louisville convention, we will share the updated ACP Individual Awards for input during the “ACP and CMBAM Updates” session at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 25. The online entry forms for Individual Awards will open Dec. 3, 2018 and close June 7, 2019.
Two nonprofit professional organizations are sponsoring cash prizes in two 2019 new awards.
In partnership with the Erie Pyle Legacy Foundation and Scripps Howard Foundation, the new Ernie Pyle ACP Reporter of the Year award will award the first-place winner $1,000 and the second and third place winners $500 and $250, respectively, in categories for both two- and four-year schools.
Student journalists will submit a human interest, storytelling, feature story, a news story and a column. The published stories should reflect great storytelling built on strong journalism skills.
This award is named in honor of 1944 Pulitzer Prize winner Ernie Pyle. Pyle was a unique reporter. His journalism skills covered a vast array of topics. He honed his skills on talking to people and telling their stories. Pyle had the ability to reach out and make folks feel comfortable sharing their good, as well as hard times. For the last 10 years of his life, Pyle’s columns ran six times a week, primarily in Scripps Howard Foundation newspapers.
The second award being added in 2019 is for Local Climate Change Reporting.
Climate change is arguably the most important story of our generation. A new Individual Award category has been established to encourage localized climate change reporting by college media.
In partnership with the George Mason University Center for Climate Change Communication, the first-place winner will earn $500 and the second and third place winners $300 and $200 respectively.
More details and the official rules for the Ernie Pyle ACP Reporter of the Year and the ACP Local Climate Change Reporting awards will be available later this fall and online when the ACP Individual Contests open Dec. 3.