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.

This will be a fast-paced, real-world style course  that focuses on:

• Investigative reporting skills
• Advanced news writing skills
• Video camerawork and editing
• On-camera presence for TV news

For students in CDAE’s Public Communication program, this course can serve as a CAPSTONE course, intended to capitalize on skills learned in other courses in the PCOM major.

For information and overrides, contact instructor Chris Evans at Chris.Evans@uvm.edu.

AND THEN:

Students who excel in this course will have the chance to compete for a six-week intensive TV reporting/anchoring internship at Lyndon State College in Summer 2012. Students who take this summer course will receive six UVM credits at a cost of roughly $6,000.

This competitive summer workshop will teach aspiring broadcast journalists every aspect of TV news, from reporting to production to anchoring, and produce a demo tape professional enough to apply for TV news jobs and internships across the country. Students in this workshop will become part of an award-winning, daily newscast, produced entirely by students.

This summer intensive workshop will be offered for the first time in Summer 2012. For details, contact Chris Evans at chris.evans@uvm.edu.

Watch the video here.

Brent Summers and Jeff Ayers on WCAX TV.

Vermont Cynic Managing Editor Jeff Ayers and Editor-in-Chief Natalie DiBlasio seconds after receiving the Pacemaker award, the top honor in college journalism.

Each year, Newspaper Pacemakers go to the best college newspapers in the nation. When this year’s winners were announced on Saturday, only one of the winners in the non-daily university category came from a school without a journalism program.

This was The Vermont Cynic at UVM.

Research by Cynic News Editor Brent Summers turned up this fact: All other winners in the Cynic’s category—a broad category including all newspapers that publish weekly, two or three times a week or even monthly—came from universities with journalism-related studies.

While UVM offers a handful of courses related to media, it has no journalism major or concentration.

Schools in the Cynic’s category ranged from George Washington University to San Francisco State University to Boston College, according to official contest results.

“We are the only school without a journalism department and/or undergraduate or graduate programs in journalism,” Summers said. “This news is simply incredible and just goes to show how well we have been able to educate the staff of the Cynic to thrive without a classroom.

“Our team works so hard: They put in nights and weekends, and this is the ultimate gratification. We have so much room to grow, and I am so excited to be part of such a great team.”

The Newspaper Pacemaker contest, co-sponsored by Associated Collegiate Press and the Newspaper Association of America Foundation, has awarded general excellence in collegiate newspapers for 84 years. This year’s entries were judged by professional journalists in the Washington, D.C., area, ACP officials said.

UVM media staff in Orlando, where the winners were announced, began texting their fellow staffers in the Vermont newsroom within minutes of the win. From left: Jenny Mudarri of WRUV-FM, media adviser Chris Evans, and Cynic staff Natalie DiBlasio, Jeff Ayers, Brent Summers and Jon Polson. Toward the back is Max Landerman of UVMtv.

The award was announced Saturday at the National College Media Convention in Orlando. Judges select winners based on newspaper coverage and content, quality of writing and reporting, leadership on the opinion page, evidence of in-depth reporting, design, photography, art and graphics, according to the website of Associated Collegiate Press, which co-sponsors the award with the Newspaper Association of America Foundation.

Pacemakers are selected by the staff of a professional newspaper or news organization, ACP officials said.

Students from The Vermont Cynic, UVMtv and WRUV-FM attended the National College Media Convention Saturday in Orlando. After the awards ceremony, at which the Cynic received its Pacemaker, the students celebrated at Walt Disney World.

Cynic Editor-in-Chief Natalie DiBlasio and Managing Editor Jeff Ayers accepted the award on behalf of the entire staff, many of whom chimed in on the Cynic’s Facebook page immediately following the announcement.

Cynic Editorial Page Editor Zach Despart wrote on the Facebook page: “Congratulations to all of the editors, writers, photographers and copy staff, and especially our fantastic layout folks who I drive crazy on a weekly basis with last-minute changes!”

Katy Petiford, The Cynic’s spring 2011 news editor, posted: “The Vermont

Cynic won a pacemaker!!!! …just sayin’ WAY TO GO!”

The 2011 Pacemaker award recognizes excellence for the 2010-2011 academic year, which began under the leadership of Haylley Johnson as editor in chief and Elliot Dodge Debruyn as managing editor and then finished up under the leadership of DiBlasio and Ayers.

The Vermont Cynic

The Cynic’s placement on the list of finalists, announced this week, provided a boost for staff members in the Cynic’s newsroom, said Natalie DiBlasio, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief.

“I am so excited!” DiBlasio wrote in an email.  “With no journalism majors and an unpaid staff, being a finalist for this award is a direct representation of just how dedicated our staff is.

“We work hard and long hours and the fact that we have been honored on such a high level is so rewarding. I am so proud of our staff and the incredible paper we create every week.”

The Newspaper Pacemaker contest, co-sponsored by the Newspaper Association of America Foundation and Associated Collegiate Press (ACP), has awarded general excellence in collegiate newspapers for 84 years, organizers state on the ACP website. This year’s entries were judged by professional journalists in the Washington, D.C., area.

The Cynic placed among two dozen papers in the non-daily university category. Other finalists included the The Ithacan of Ithaca College in Ithaca, N.Y.; The Vanderbilt Hustler of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and
The GW Hatchet of George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

Entries were judged based on criteria such as coverage and content, quality of writing and reporting, leadership on the opinion page, evidence of in-depth reporting, layout and design, and photography, art and graphics, the website states.

“I’m pumped,” said Jeff Ayers, the Cynic’s managing editor. “It’s exciting to have the hard work of our staff recognized on a national level. We hold ourselves to a high standard, and it’s nice to have that rewarded.”

Winners will be announced at the 90th Annual ACP/CMA National College Media Convention on Oct. 29 in Orlando.

The Vermont Cynic provides the UVM community with weekly news, editorials, sports, fashion, technology and student life stories. Located on the first floor of the sparkling new Davis Student Center, the Cynic has a long and rich tradition of journalism that extends back as far as 1883 when it was established here at UVM.

The first meeting of the semester is 6 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 1, in Waterman 427.

The Cynic feeds you with pizza the first week of every month. Later in the semester, meeting times will change to 7:15 p.m.

NEED TRAINING? The training workshops will be on Saturday, Sept. 3 from 12-2:30 p.m. on the fourth floor of the Davis Center. We will meet in the Livak Ballroom, on the fourth floor of the Davis Center, and there will be food delicious food.

For more, check out Cynic INFO.

WRUV-FM features the largest collection of CD’s and vinyl in Vermont and an eclectic mix of anything and everything you might want to hear. Staffed by students and members of Burlington’s music-oriented community, the station offers you the chance to spin discs of some of the best music, months before most people have heard of it.

The first meeting will be 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 4 in the Livak Ballroom on the 4th floor of the Davis Center. Come and meet the coolest DJs in town!

Want to be a DJ? Training begins Sunday, September 18 at 7pm in the Mansfield Room.

For more, check out WRUV INFO.

UVMtv opened its new studio in the Davis Center just last year, but for it’s long been the source of student-generated, student-selected video content for everyone on campus. Actors, anchors, producers and other members of the UVMtv team come together to produce the best, most eclectic mix of entertainment and news for the UVM community.

Join UVMtv for the first station meeting at 7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 11, in the Grand Maple Ballroom on the 4th floor of the Davis Center. Help shape the future of video at the University of Vermont!

In the meantime, check out UVMtv INFO for more.