"Pumped"

Recipient of the STAR ONLINE PACKAGE OF THE YEAR award in The Charles E. Green Awards (2023)

Gabrielle Munoz, Raul Alonzo, Wells Dunbar

Texas Standard Staff

Judge’s Comments:

The story of the Texas gas station may seem mundane, but in the hands of the Texas Standard, this cultural and iconic institution serves as the launch for a rich conversation about the history of cars, fuel, mass transit, electric cars and the evolution of the gas station itself. Embracing a full range of digital storytelling tools, Texas Standard provides an engaging, exhaustive and entertaining timeline for Texas’ necessity for and love of the gas station and automobiles, from the first station in 1910 to its contemporary cousin, Buc-ee’s. The series also explores the consumption of fuel and the widening use of automobiles following the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling on mass transit systems in mid-20th century; whites didn’t want to travel on street cars with blacks, and many mass transit systems died for lack of ridership and tax dollars. Through the deft use of podcasts, video, photographs and well-crafted stories, along with a robust use of social media, Texas Standard establishes a journalistic benchmark for digital storytelling through its finely honed, wide-reaching and sophisticated series about the gas station, an institution deeply rooted in how we live and move about the state.

This was an exceptionally strong category, with news organizations producing online packages ranging from local to statewide to international. Texas Standard set the standard for use of digital storytelling skills in ways other entries, as strong as all of them are, did not. Congratulations to all the finalists for this prize and for your service to your communities.

Bill Celis
Journalist, Educator, Author

Judge’s Bio:

Bill Celis is a journalist, educator and author. For 20 years he worked at leading Texas and U.S. dailies. He is a former national correspondent for the New York Times and a former reporter and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He also worked for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a general assignments reporter and for the El Paso Times State staff.

For 25 years he served as a professor of journalism, first at the University of Colorado at Boulder and at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, where over 21 years he earned tenure and served as associate director, program director and associate dean responsible for undergraduate and graduate curriculum, assessment, recruitment, diversity in the classroom and the recruitment of diverse students, staff and faculty.

In 2010 he led the school-wide committee that produced the first diversity audit of any USC school, winning the 2012 Diversity and Equity Award from the Association of Educators of Mass Communication and Journalism.

Among other teaching awards he won the 2018 Barry Bingham Fellowship, awarded annually to journalism educators for their work in diversity.

He is the author of, "Battle Rock: A One-Room School in America's Vanishing West" (Public Affairs, 2003), and is working on another book about disenfranchised children.

He earned his undergraduate degree in 1978 in journalism at Howard Payne University (Brownwood, Texas) and a master's degree in 1982 from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.  He lives in San Antonio, his hometown.

To watch the award-winning coverage from the team at the Texas Standard, click the links below:

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