A heartbreaking note of staggering thanks regarding the Vermont Cynic’s Pacemaker win
It’s Thanksgiving weekend and long past due for me to say a few words of thanks to some important people who helped the Cynic achieve its national ranking this year.
2011 Cynic staffers celebrate at the Cynic Pacemaker Awards Dinner
1. THE FOLKS IN UVM STUDENT LIFE. I can’t say enough about the Student Life crew. Director Patrick Brown creates an environment of support, in which advice is freely given, and personal responsibility, in which he lets his staff make our own mistakes and profit from our successes. In this department, I’ve never felt micromanaged and I’ve never felt abandoned. That’s pretty cool.
2. THE CDAE TEAM. Even before I was offered the job of advising the Cynic some five years ago, I’d brainstormed with Jane Kolodinsky, chair of the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics, to begin offering a new kind of instruction in college media and news writing as part of her department’s nascent Public Communication major. Without support from Jane, the other wonderful professors in this department and, most certainly, office mojo queen Tina Haskins, we’d never have the educational support we’ve needed to create such a significant culture of media learning.
3. UVM ADMINISTRATION. My hat’s off especially to former UVM president Dan Fogel, who in 2006 created the position of student media adviser to boost training efforts at the Cynic.
4. THE STUDENTS TIMES INFINITY. I’ve had the pleasure of working with five executive editors from the moment they took on the job. They were, in order, Austin Danforth, Dakota Rubin, William Sedlack, Haylley Johnson and Natalie DiBlasio. Though the Pacemaker award recognizes work specifically for the academic year supervised by these last two editors, I give credit to each of these leaders and their phenomenal staffs for steadily building a culture of news and professionalism that has made them national leaders. Though I can name these particular students because they represent the larger whole, I give credit to the hundreds of students who have been part of the Cynic staff during my five years as adviser. They are the ones who made it happen.
Brent Summers, the latest editor-in-chief, takes over this week. He has big shoes to fill, but, as an inquisitive and enthusiastic Public Communication student who has been well-trained by his predecessors, I have no doubt that these particular shoes (to butcher the metaphor) will fit perfectly.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
