The Auburn Plainsman was recently awarded a national Pacemaker Award during the Associated Collegiate Press/College Media Association National College Media Convention in Philadelphia as one of the best four-year non-daily collegiate newspapers for the 2013-14 year.
The award, presented annually by the ACP/CMA, is considered the highest honor in student journalism.
The Red and Black of the University of Georgia was the only other newspaper in the SEC to receive the award.
This is the 25th Pacemaker Award won by The Plainsman, the most recent being 2012 and again in 2005.
"It feels as good as it possibly can," said 2013-14 Plainsman editor and 2014 graduate Kelsey Davis. "When you're in the middle of doing that kind of work, day in and day out, you wonder if what you're doing is good, if you're doing everything as well as you can be. It almost feels like I have some closure knowing that, looking back, you can objectively say that you did a good job based on the standards of a panel of experts."
Davis said she was watching the Auburn-Ole Miss football game at a bar in Austin, Texas, when a friend sent her the finalist results.
Davis said the credit goes to everyone on the 2013-14 staff and the honor is a conglomeration of all their efforts.
"It's hard to express how grateful I am for the staff I had back there," Davis said. "To be in a leadership position and know that everything is riding on you but still have the support system that I had, to be surrounded by students your age who believe in what you believe in, believe in journalism and are willing to sacrifice their time and social life, their sleep for it, asking people to do that and to have them respond to the degree that they did is all incredibly humbling and I could not possibly be more grateful for the staff I had."
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