'DP' wins Pacemaker again

The Daily Pennsylvanian The award, one of the top two prizes in college journalism, is sponsored by the Associated Collegiate Press and the Newspaper Association of America Foundation. It is given in recognition of "general excellence and outstanding achievement in a college newspaper." Finalists were announced earlier this year, and the winners were announced during the annual ACP/College Media Advisers convention in Kansas City, Mo., this weekend. The convention -- the largest gathering of collegiate editors and journalists in the country -- brought together hundreds of students from across the country for a weekend of seminars and workshops. Five papers win the award annually for their work the previous academic year. This year's winners also included the Arizona Daily Wildcat from the University of Arizona at Tucson, the Collegian from Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan., Michigan State University in East Lansing's State News and the Daily Tar Heel from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to last year, the DP won the award after the 1989-90 school year. "I'm extremely pleased that, for the second year in a row, the DP has been recognized as one of the top college newspapers in the nation," DP Executive Editor Michael Mugmon said. "Winning the Pacemaker makes the hard work and dedication of our editors, managers, reporters and staffers very worthwhile." "We'll try to build on our accomplishments and continue to provoke thought and awareness throughout the Penn community," he added. The other prestigious award is the Columbia Scholastic Press Association's Gold Crown, usually given in March to seven collegiate papers for work from the previous calendar year. The DP won the Gold Crown this year for the fourth time since the competition began in 1982 and the first time since 1994. The DP is the only collegiate daily to have won all three of the most recent awards: the 1996-97 and 1997-98 Pacemakers and the 1998 Gold Crown.