San Francisco – Winners have been announced in Multimedia Team Enterprise Story Competition of the 2025-2026 Hearst Journalism Awards Program. The winners were selected from 67 entries from 42 schools submitted in the fourth and final multimedia competition of the year.
First Place has been awarded to Lauren Howe, Ali Costellow, Myah Griffin, Sam Huffman, Lindsey McIntosh, Hallie Stafford, Gabriel Milby, Jacob Sebastian, Von Smith, and Melissa Taylor from Western Kentucky University.
Other top five winners:
Second Place, $2,000 award, Kabedi Mutamba, Charice Salazar, Gabby Drees, Alayna Larson, Alice Cruse, Rose Grau, Annika Nelson, and Sofie Nettleton, University of Iowa
Third Place, $1,500 award, Sophie Hughett, Dallia Lindell, Gowri Abhinanda, Ella Campbell, and Max Feliu, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Fourth Place, $1,000 award, Eli Randolph and Madeline Powell, Western Kentucky University
Fifth Place, $1,000 award, Quincy Marks, Grace Richards, Shelby Swanson, Aayas Joshi, and Jiayi Zhang, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The top five winning schools will receive matching grants.
Sixth-through-tenth place finalists:
Sixth Place, Shamar Moses, Brogan Burns, Troy Daigle, Anne-Morgan Simmons, Mark Bourgeois, and Matt Santiago, Nicholls State University
Seventh Place, Maya Kolton, Megan Basile, Cole Pannel, and Kaitlyn Delany, Michigan State University
Eighth Place, Kayla McDonald and Erica Hoyt, Arizona State University
Ninth Place, Robyn Iron, Nate Molloy, Jocelyn Baumann, Madelynn Pandis, James Reynolds, Dahlia Pettitt, Aiden Havens, and Mackenna Gleave, University of Montana
Tenth Place, Colette Sellers, Luis Arellano, and Lauren Becker, University of Oregon
Western Kentucky University has won the Intercollegiate Multimedia Competition with the highest student points from the four multimedia competitions held this year.
They are followed by:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Florida
University of Southern California
Syracuse University
Michigan State University
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Pennsylvania State University
University of Kentucky
University of Iowa
The top three intercollegiate winners earn $10,000, $5,000 and $2,500 respectively.
The multimedia judges are: Lauren Frohne, Lead Video Journalist, The Seattle Times; Jim Seida, Former Producer, NBC News; Ed Ou, Visual Journalist/Documentary Filmmaker.
The Hearst Journalism Awards Program added multimedia to its competition roster in 2010. Now in its 66th year, the 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 104 universities of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication with accredited undergraduate journalism programs are eligible to participate in the Hearst competitions.
