2026 Multimedia Championship
From the 287 multimedia entries received in the four monthly competitions, five winners qualified for the Hearst National Multimedia Championship held in San Francisco where they competed for additional awards
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The finalists met their judges – Jim Seida, Lauren Frohne and Ed Ou – on Saturday May 30 for orientation, to review the Championship assignment and receive a critique of their qualifying work.
This year, the finalists were asked to produce a piece on the following prompt: “Survival – Survival means different things to different people. Often, it’s not what we expect.”
The spent the next few days producing stories that incorporated writing, photos, videos, graphics, and interactive elements.
The judges received the finalists’ multimedia pieces Wednesday evening, reviewed the work and selected the winners who were announced at the awards ceremony on Thursday evening in the Gold Ballroom of the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.
The first-through-third place winners were awarded scholarships of $10,000, $7,500, and $5,000 respectively.
The finalists earned a $1,500 scholarship.
The winners and finalists are featured below.
Winners
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill
$5,000 scholarship
