The Retrograde received 13 awards at the 2026 Texas Intercollegiate Press Association conference, held in Denton this past weekend. Its staff won the Overall Excellence award among Division I newspapers — TIPA’s category for large four-year schools — marking the first time any UTD publication has won the prize.
Overall Excellence Division 1 is TIPA’s highest honor for competing newspapers. Participants submit three complete editions of the newspaper and are evaluated based on thoroughness of coverage, variety, appearance and editorial ability. UTD teams previously won third in the category in 2022, but have not won the top honor since 2017, when the school was placed in a smaller division.
This year, The Retrograde exclusively competed in pre-published awards, in which advisers and journalists from across Texas judge an entire year’s worth of work. TIPA also offers awards for winning live contests, wherein staff compete in different events during the convention weekend.
The full list of honors The Retrograde won this year includes:
First Place
- Overall Excellence: The Retrograde
- Breaking News: Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, Maria Shaikh and Tyler Crivella for “Professors sue UTD over pro-Palestine encampment arrest, alleging retaliation and rights violations”
- Editorial: Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, Maria Shaikh, Nandini Singh, Ashna Karia, Aimee Morgan and Tyler Crivella for “We’re suing the UT System. Here’s why.”
- Ad Design: Iva Davis for SPJ, FIRE and SPLC’s “Keep fighting the good fight” ad
- Feature Audio Reporting: Tyler Crivella for “Bill Muntean melts the ice on Antarctic policy and penguin love”
Second Place
- In-Depth Reporting: Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez, Sherlyn Dominguez and Tyler Crivella for “‘My story was stolen from me and buried’: A survivor’s battle with UTD’s Title IX”
- Headline Writing: Tyler Crivella
- General Column: Tyler Crivella for “UTD’s handling of Box-a-Thon is yet another case of campus censorship”
- Editorial Cartoon: Rainier Pederson for “Junior, you know you have a bedtime”
Third Place
- Cartoon Strip/Panel: Deborah Luo for “Parking Lot”
- Static Information Graphic: Yiyi Ding for “‘I hope we have a president who is ethical’”
- Interactive Graphic: Rainier Pederson for “How Texas’ redistricting battle affects UTD”
Honorable Mention
- Critical Review: Gregorio Olivares Gutierrez for “Retrograde Reads: the ‘purifying’ impulse never left Texas”
One Comment
Congrats to the RG team for all of these well-deserved accolades! Cheering you guys on forever and always.