Volume 118 of The Chronicle won the 2023 Online Pacemaker Award, presented by the Associated College Press.
This is The Chronicle’s fifth year in a row winning the Pacemaker, which is widely considered the Pulitzer Prize of college journalism, and has been awarded since 1927.
Entries in the categories of Newspaper, Online, Yearbooks, Broadcast and Magazine are considered for their “coverage and content; quality of writing and reporting; leadership; design; photography; and graphics.” The organization also awards Pacemakers in the categories of Business, Innovation and Multiplatform.
Vol. 118 Editor-in-Chief Milla Surjadi and Managing Editor Katie Tan, both seniors, said that the award is recognition of The Chronicle’s staff members and their work reporting on the several faces of an ever-changing University.
“I hope Vol. 118 was able to fulfill the role of The Chronicle as I see it, which is to bear witness to the complexities of Duke — joy, ambition, inequities, wrongdoings, grief, intimacies, excellence — in order for community members to truly understand the place they live in and the people they live among,” Surjadi said.
Surjadi added that the award is a “testament to the urgency of doing that work, the village it requires to do so, and the reward of being part of something bigger than ourselves.”
“To get to lead a group of inimitable student journalists was a privilege and a joy,” she said.
Tan echoed Surjadi’s words.
“Last year, we captured the University’s changing social landscape — we reported on all sides of Duke’s transition into QuadEx, the realignment of student affinity spaces and the mobilization from graduate students to create a University-recognized union, just to name a few,” Tan said. “I’m so grateful to have written and edited alongside such sharp and intelligent staff.”
Ultimately, Surjadi says she is grateful to the Duke community for allowing The Chronicle to tell their stories. She said that the students, faculty and staff that make up the University have “bestowed upon our newsroom the optimism that things can change — in our communities, our institutions and in the journalism industry itself.”
The Chronicle was one of 18 newspapers at four-year universities to win the Online Pacemaker Award. Winners were announced Monday evening at the ACP/CMA Fall National College Media Convention in Atlanta.
Vol. 117 won the Online Pacemaker Award in 2022, as did Vol. 116 in 2021, Vol. 115 in 2020, Vol. 114 in 2019 and Vol. 110 in 2015.
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Adway S. Wadekar is a Trinity junior and former news editor of The Chronicle's 119th volume.