From the Editors Desk: CARRYING A 60-YEAR LEGACY OF EXCELLENCE

Welcome to the 2026-27 academic year and the first issue of The Advocate’s 61st volume. The pages you hold in your hand (or perhaps you’re reading online) represent a tradition that has served as a frontline storyteller, investigator, mirror and archivist for our community for exactly six decades!

It’s an interesting experience to find oneself stepping into a milestone like a 60th anniversary. As a newsroom, it’s prompted us to look backward – to think about the generations of student journalists who sat at these same desks before us, rushing to meet deadlines, debating editorial ethics and chronicling the history of our campus. To acknowledge how journalism itself has shifted and evolved over the decades and how Mt Hood Community College student media has risen to meet it.

It is a humbling legacy to inherit, and as we prepared over the summer to launch this new volume, we received a powerful reminder that our history isn’t just something we look back on – it is something we are actively building.

In the final weeks of the spring term, we briefly shared the news of our staff’s individual accolades at the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association collegiate awards. We celebrated our writers, photographers, artists and designers who took home an astonishing 21 staff and individual honors for their specific contributions, even as we faced unprecedented operational challenges that could have easily shut our newsroom down. We thought that was the end of the chapter for the academic year.

Then, just as we prepared to break for the summer, we received an unexpected announcement.

The ONPA revealed the final, overarching honor of the competition, naming our publication the recipient of the Collegiate Newspaper General Excellence award.

For those who are unfamiliar with these awards, General Excellence is not handed out for a single breaking news story or beautiful photograph. It recognizes the newspaper as a living, breathing whole. It looks at the depth of our reporting, the visual design of our pages, the diversity of the stories we share and the voices we highlight and the consistency of our editorial voice. To win this award means that every single person who touched our paper last year, from seasoned student editors to brand-new contributors writing their very first news briefs, contributed to the highest level of collegiate journalism in the state.

Receiving this news at the end of the term, when the newsroom was empty and the printers were quiet, was a profound moment of validation. It proved that the long hours, late nights and relentless dedication of last year’s staff solidified our contribution to an enduring legacy of journalistic excellence at The Advocate – an honor that this student editor does not take lightly.

Now, with the doors to our newsroom open once again and a new academic year unfolding before us, this General Excellence award serves as our new baseline. We know what we are capable of achieving, and our goal is to push those boundaries even further.

And for every student reading this: This award-winning paper belongs to you. A newspaper, like any media outlet, is only as vital as the community it covers and the perspectives that shape it. The Advocate’s long-standing mission remains “FOR the students, BY the students.”

Our newsroom door is always open to storytellers, reporters, photographers, creators, sports fans and critics alike. We invite you to come on in and help us write the next page – no experience required.

As we cross this threshold into our 60th year, we pledge to uphold the legacy of integrity, accountability, and deeply passionate journalism that earned us this honor. Thank you for reading, thank you for supporting student media, and thank you for helping us make Volume 61 our most exceptional year yet.

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