At the Hilton Union Square in San Francisco, members from KCBY-TV and The Sidekick sit in a stupendous ballroom anxiously waiting to hear their names called during the awards ceremony on Saturday at the JEA/NSPA Spring National High School Journalism Convention.

As the announcer nears the end of the National Scholastic Press Association Online Pacemaker winners list, The Sidekick staff designer Meghan Chiang starts to worry whether or not Coppell Student Media’s name will be called.

Then the announcer calls out through the microphone…

Coppell Student Media, Online Pacemaker!

Coppell students erupt with elation as the cheers and applause can be heard throughout the room. Coppell Student Media received a 2023 NSPA Online Pacemaker, one of the most prestigious and paramount awards a scholastic journalism group can receive.

This award marks the sixth Online Pacemaker award that Coppell Student Media has received.

“I still always think back to that first one,” The Sidekick adviser Chase Wofford said. “I don’t take it for granted. It’s still exciting for me because I know how much it means to kids in the program and I know how hard it was to win the first Pacemaker so I’ll never get to the point where I think it’s no big deal. I always think back to that first group because they were finalists for a long time and it was hard getting over the hump. They raised the bar and broke through and each group that has followed has taken that as something to have pride in.”

The window for judging a website is from October to April and involves multiple visits to the site by a judge as well as meeting multiple criteria.

“Online Pacemaker is different because they announce finalists and continue to judge after they’ve been announced; It’s more live judging,” Wofford said. “They come back to your site multiple times from October to April. I think that’s kind of the challenge of it because you have to be really consistent, you can’t just have a good week or a good day and win.”

The awarding of an Online Pacemaker on a cloudy Saturday evening was a moment of celebration for the entire staff. Members were transported out of the lazy haze and grind of homework to celebrate both with their families and fellow staff members.

“I was actually at home in bed and doing work when I found out that we were NSPA Pacemaker winners from Meghan,” The Sidekick executive news editor Sri Achanta said. “I was like, ‘Oh my god this is phenomenal.’ I went downstairs and I told my dad – my dad had no idea what the award was – but I was just so happy and so proud and I stopped doing all of my work after that. I was just in that moment of elation.”

Even across the country in Orlando, Fla. at DECA’s International Career Development Conference, The Sidekick executive editorial page editor Manasa Mohan broke down in elation at the joyous news.

“My group and I were out at Universal Studios and I saw the slack message from Meghan,” Mohan said. “I remember almost screaming in the middle of a ride line, it was so incredible.”

This award holds a special place in the hearts of many staff members, especially The Sidekick executive editor-in-chief Angelina Liu.

“It means a lot,” Liu said. “It started back in my sophomore year with Sally Parampottil because she was a great editor but also someone that I looked up to, and the year after that Anjali Krishna was an amazing editor and always knew the right thing to say. I knew coming in as a leader I had really high expectations for myself and one of those was winning a Pacemaker because I wanted the senior staff to be able to say that they got it all three years in a row. I definitely wouldn’t say it was all because of me because it was something that this entire staff accomplished.”

This award also represents a special milestone for the graduating seniors who have been with the program all three years.

“Winning an Online Pacemaker was always a goal,” Mohan said. “It’s always been a goal to get these awards because we’ve wanted to continue that momentum. Angelina, Srihari Yechangunja and I have all been on staff for the past three years and we’ve won all three of those years so we definitely had wanted to finish on a high note.”

Winning this award validates all the staff’s hard work over the past year and the talent that is present in the program.

“No matter what year it is this program breeds that kind of talent and no matter who comes through they have the opportunity to do something incredible,” said Yechangunja, The Sidekick executive design/interactive editor. 

Receiving this honor was not without its hardships. A lot of long hours, communication and numerous meetings as well as a staff-wide effort to improve contributed to this award.

“We really picked up the pace, no pun intended, with podcasts,” Wofford said. “I liked seeing us improve there, but this also is because of the staff’s hard work. High school journalism is meant to be fun, but it’s also a grind, it’s work and the reward comes from telling people’s stories and seeing your work. Having the volume that we publish, growing the videos and podcasts just made us have a site that is worthy of this honor.”

KCBY-TV also received second place in Broadcast Best of Show at the San Francisco convention. Best of Show is awarded to the top 10 entries per category by attending schools at the JEA/NSPA Conventions. KCBY-TV also placed second in Best of Show in November at the fall convention in St. Louis.

“It was honestly a big accomplishment,” KCBY-TV program director Betsy Krenek said. “That was a show we put together during the ice storm and it was really chaotic because we were trying to do as much as we could from home. It wasn’t our best work because of that but we still got second place which was awesome.”

KCBY-TV’s award also required copious amounts of hard work, long hours both in and outside of school and even doubling up on segment production.

“It’s been a lot,” Krenek said. “We had people making two to three segments per week and so our staffers are really great but it was just a lot to keep up with.”

Members of The Sidekick hope receiving this award for yet another time will only continue to bolster the program’s strength.

“I think it sets us in a really good direction,” Mohan said. “Whoever the next chief is or whoever the next editors are will want to become even stronger than we were this year. Maybe they’ll want to win Newspaper Pacemaker as well or even more awards. The more we win and the more ambitious we become is always a good thing because the staff pushes harder and harder and that’s how you get great content. I can hope and I will definitely be watching to see our program move in the direction of achieving more greatness.”

KCBY-TV members share a similar sentiment.

“I think we are headed in the right direction,” Krenek said. “We came back from COVID-19 and that was my sophomore year so there really wasn’t a KCBY. We came back and the executive team did a really good job of getting us back on track and we’ve just been improving and getting better. I think this program is set for the future, they’re going to do great.”

Follow Nyah Rama (@nyah_rama) and @CHSCampusNews on Twitter.