The Talisman and the College Heights Herald posted an exceptionally strong showing as finalists for the premier honors in student media for 2025, the Associated Collegiate Press Pacemaker and Individual awards.
The Talisman, WKU’s life and culture magazine and website, is a finalist for two Pacemaker Awards:
- The Multiplatform Pacemaker, which assesses the publication across all its platforms — print, online, newsletter, audio/visual and social media.
- The Magazine Pacemaker, for its print edition.
The College Heights Herald, WKU’s student-run news outlet, is a finalist for the Newsmagazine Pacemaker, for its print edition.
Six WKU students were named as finalists in the ACP Individual Awards:
- In-Depth News Story of the Year: Cameron Shaw, College Heights Herald, What happened to Hilltopper Hall?
- Breaking News Story of the Year: Clarissa Dean, Talisman, We were not prepared: Bowling Green faces historic flooding.
- Multimedia Photo Slide Show of the Year: Lauren Howe, Kayden Mulrooney, Talisman, Welcome to our house.
- Sports Game/Action Photo of the Year: Brodie Curtsinger, Talisman, Soccer.
- Illustration of the Year: Nika Harrington, Talisman, Connection horoscopes.
Winners of the Pacemaker Awards and the Individual Awards will be announced Oct. 18 at MediaFest in Washington, D.C., the National College Media Convention.
For the Talisman, the two finalist designations bring to 33 the number of times the publication has been named a finalist. Talisman has won the Pacemaker Award 22 times, the first in 1978 as a yearbook. Its most recent Pacemaker Award was in 2022, for the WKUTalisman.com website.
For the College Heights Herald, the finalist designation is the 45th time the Herald has been named a finalist. The Herald has won the Pacemaker Award 25 times since its first Newspaper Pacemaker in 1981. Its most recent Pacemakers came in 2024-25, the Multiplatform Pacemaker and the Newsmagazine Pacemaker.
Both the Talisman and the Herald are in the ACP Hall of Fame, and both were named to The Pacemaker 100, the 100 most successful student media outlets in the century-long history of ACP, with the Herald No. 6 in The Pacemaker 100 Top 10.
All together, WKU Student Publications has collected 50 Pacemaker Awards, including those for the Herald and the Talisman, two jointly for Student Publications Advertising and Cherry Creative branded-content studio, and one for Cherry Creative alone.