After another year of serving the maroon and white, Texas A&M Student Media took home the gold.             
From March 30 to April 1 representatives from Texas A&M Student Media, which includes The Battalion and the Aggieland yearbook, attended the 2017 Texas Intercollegiate Press Association, or TIPA, conference in Dallas. The conference included competitions, workshops and discussions covering every aspect of college media.                       
As part of the conference, colleges select their best work from the previous year to be judged alongside selections from other schools across Texas, according to communication senior and editor-in-chief of The Battalion Sam King.                      
“Colleges from around the state send in submissions in a variety of different categories — everything from news stories to podcasts — and the entries are judged and subsequent awards are given out,” King said.
After the TIPA award ceremony Saturday morning, A&M’s student media emerged with a total of 67 awards, including individual excellence awards for several student media staff members, King said. Both The Aggieland and The Battalion placed first in overall excellence — the conference’s top award.
“This was a great showing for us and many of the categories we entered in for the first time were categories we won in and that’s always exciting,” King said. “Our multimedia desk sent in submission for the first time this year and they took home several awards, including first place in recurring podcast.”
Battalion editor-in-chief Sam King and news editor Chevall Pryce were named editor of the year and reporter of the year, respectively.                 
The TIPA awards present an opportunity to recognize how far A&M’s student media has come over the years, according to agricultural communication and journalism senior and 2016 Aggieland editor-in-chief Katy Baldock.                       
“I think it shows the progress that student media is making,” Baldock said. “I think each year, it seems Student Media wins more and more awards.”        
This year’s honors have set the bar high for the future of Aggie student media, according to English senior and Battalion managing editor Katy Stapp.                    
“Getting all these awards is a wonderful thing, but it also presents a responsibility to live up to that measure of ‘best college newspaper in the state of Texas,’” Stapp said. “I am very confident the staff will continue to do that next year.”
King said while a little recognition is certainly nice, student media’s role in the Aggie community is its own reward.
“We never have and never will do what we do for the awards,” King said. “Our goal when we sit down each year is not to clean up at competitions, but to make sure that our audience is being served with the highest quality and most relevant content we can provide.”