San Francisco – Winners have been announced in the Explanatory reporting – Individual/Team Competition of the 2024-2025 Hearst Journalism Awards Program. The winners were selected from 93 entries from 58 schools submitted in the final writing competition of the year.
First Place has been awarded to Madison Holcomb, as senior from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Madison wins a $3,000 scholarship for the article “Millions of livestock die each year while being transported. Those cases are rarely investigated by the USDA” published on investigatemidwest.org.
Madison also qualifies for the National Writing Championship in June 2025.
Second Place, $2,000 award: Rylie Oswald and Elizabeth Walters, University of Kanas
Third Place, $1,500 award: Sophia Abolfathi, University of Florida
Fourth Place, $1,000 award: Kennedy Thomason, Oklahoma State University
Fifth Place, $1,000 award: Finn Lincoln, Syracuse University
The top five winning schools will receive matching grants.
Sixth-through-tenth place finalists:
Sixth Place, certificate: Kiersten Hacker, Christina Walker and Ela Jalil, University of Maryland
Seventh Place, certificate: Jami Martin-Trainor and Colin Votzmeyer, University of Iowa
Eighth Place, certificate: Sinclair Holian, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Ninth Place, certificate: Morgan Norris, Hampton University
Tenth Place, certificate: Alex Walters, Owen McCarthy and Theo Scheer, Michigan State University
University of Florida has won the Intercollegiate Writing Competition with the highest accumulated student points from the four writing competitions held this academic year.
They are followed by:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Iowa
Indiana University
Arizona State University
Texas Christian University
Oklahoma State University
Michigan State University
University of Oregon
Syracuse University
The top three intercollegiate winners earn $10,000, $5,000 and $2,500 respectively
The writing judges are: Maria Reeve, Managing Editor/Vice President, The Star Tribune; Sue Campbell, Managing Editor, Features, The Star Tribune; David Callaway, Founder and Editor, Callaway Climate Insights.
The 65th annual Hearst Journalism Awards Program includes four writing, two photo, one audio, two television, one podcast and four multimedia competitions offering up to $700,000 in scholarships, matching grants and stipends. Currently, there are 105 universities of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication with accredited undergraduate journalism programs are eligible to participate in the Hearst competitions.
