‘What we do here is very different’: Spokane Falls Community College student-run paper, the Communicator, is a finalist for print Pacemaker Award

Spokane Falls Community College’s student-run newspaper the Communicator is in the running for what is considered to be the Pulitzer Prize of collegiate journalism.

The Associated College Press Pacemaker Award is given to newspapers that demonstrate “excellence in key areas including coverage, writing, editing, design and photography.” Winning newspapers are celebrated for “risks and (serving) as a strong voice for the student audience.”

In total, 90 newspapers and magazines entered this year’s competition, with 49 finalists selected. Forty of those finalists are from four-year colleges, while the other nine come from two-year schools. Four of those nine publications will receive a Pacemaker Award.

Winners will be announced during the National College Media Convention, held Oct. 15-18 in Washington, D.C.

The Communicator is the only newspaper from a school in Washington to be named a finalist. The Communicator website won Pacemaker Awards in 2009 and 2010, but this is the first year in the newspaper’s 53-year history that the print edition is a finalist.

Faculty adviser Jason Nix had to read the finalist announcement a few times before it clicked that the newspaper was picked.

“This is the first year we entered the contest since COVID,” he said. “I just now felt we were ready, and then when I saw us on the list of finalists, I was like ‘Oh my God. We’re already there?’ I thought it would take us many years to get up to that point again.”

He then contacted the former editor-in-chief, now a student at Washington State University, and let her share the news with the rest of the staff.

Collegiate journalists who wanted to be considered for the Pacemaker Awards submitted three print issues produced during the 2024-25 school year which were then evaluated by two teams of three judges. At least two of the three judges had to agree on whether a newspaper would be eliminated or named a finalist or winner.

For the Communicator staff, that wasn’t a difficult decision, as they produce one issue a quarter. Pre-COVID, the newspaper would release up to three issues a quarter. During the pandemic, Nix decided to focus on “one excellent issue per quarter” and has kept it that way ever since.

The newspaper has gone from 12 pages to 16 to 20 to now 24. Nix said they will have to print more copies of this issue than the last because they ran out.

“I keep hearing about the death of press,” Nix said. “I keep hearing about ‘Gen Z doesn’t want to do anything that’s not on their phones,’ and I think that’s simply not true. I think these students like to pick up an analog thing, whether it’s a record, whether it’s a physical newspaper. And I think they really think it’s interesting, because they’re so used to being able to hit ‘post’ on something.

“What we do here is very different.”

At the Communicator, the students write the stories, design the pages and deliver the paper themselves. Nix said if the Communicator were online only, he doesn’t think he’d have as many students as he does.

Nix said he’s seen an increase in an interest in journalism from young students, which he thinks has a lot to do with the political situation in the country.

“I don’t know if it’s a rebellious thing or they’re really interested in preserving those free speech rights and those free press rights, but we’re seeing a huge increase in enrollment, which I did not expect.”

The newspaper staff isn’t going to attend the convention in Washington, D.C., deciding to focus instead on their annual trip to New York, treating that trip as a victory lap. They’re still planning on having a watch party, though Nix hopes the students are proud of themselves no matter the outcome.

“I want them to not discount this even if they aren’t selected as one of the four,” he said. “Just being selected as a finalist is winning.”

Come what may at the Pacemakers Awards, Nix knows the staff will continue to be ahead of the curve.

“We’re not changing our objectivity,” he said. “We’re not going to become political. We’re not going there. I’m the old man in the room that sticks to these old journalistic standards, and then they’re the young people in the room who want to do those things in new formats. Between the two, it works really well.”