2020-21 Hearst Personality/Profile Writing Winners Announced

San Francisco – The top 10 winners in college Personality/Profile Writing have been announced in the 61st annual William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program.

There were 114 profile writing entries submitted from 64 universities in our fourth writing competition of this
academic year.

First Place has been awarded to  George Stoia, a spring 2020 graduate from the University of Oklahoma. George receives a $3,000 scholarship for the article “Courageous: The Maggie Nichols Story” published in the 
OU Daily.

University of Oklahoma’s College of Journalism & Mass Communication will receive a matching grant, as do the journalism departments of all scholarship winners.

Per program guidelines, George is not eligible to participate in the 2021 Championships as he is a spring 2020 graduate.

Second-place winner Melissa Manno, a junior from Pennsylvania State University, receives a $2,000
scholarship and qualifies for the Writing Championship in June 2021 for her article “The Inmates’ Reality” published in The Lion’s Roar.

Other scholarship winners are:


Michaela Mulligan, University of Florida, third place, $1,500 scholarship

Lilly St. Angelo, Indiana University, fourth place, $1,000 scholarship

Sadie Brown, University of North Texas, fifth place, $1,000 scholarship

The sixth-through-tenth place winners earn Hearst certificates:

Jake Santo, Arizona State University, sixth place, certificate

Olivia Wales, Texas Christian University, seventh place, certificate

Matt Courson, Middle Tennessee State University, eighth place, certificate

Rachel Bernstein, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, ninth place, certificate

Jamie Landers, Arizona State University, tenth place, certificate

Syracuse University placed first in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition with the highest accumulated student points from the first four of five writing competitions held this year.
They are followed by: Indiana University; Arizona State University; Drake University; University of Florida; University of Oklahoma; Pennsylvania State University; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; University of Missouri;
University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The final intercollegiate winners will be announced after the completion of all five writing competitions in June. The top three winning schools will earn $10,000, $4,000 and $2,000 respectively.

Judging the writing competitions this year are: Dwayne Bray, Journalist-at-large, ESPN’s The Undefeated; Larry Kramer, retired President and Publisher, USA Today; and Maria Reeve, Managing Editor/Content, Houston
Chronicle.

The Hearst Journalism Awards Program is conducted under the auspices of accredited schools of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication and fully funded and administered by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. 103 member universities of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication with accredited undergraduate journalism programs are eligible to participate in the Hearst competitions.

The 14 monthly competitions consist of five writing, two photojournalism, one audio, two television and
four multimedia, with Championship finals in all divisions. The program awards up to $700,000 in scholarships and grants annually.