2009 – 2010 Writing Winners
From a record 633 writing entries received in the 2009-2010 writing competitions, eight finalists’ competition articles qualified them for the Hearst National Writing Championship in New York City, where they competed for additional scholarship awards. This special event consisted of an on-the-spot assignment and a press interview. The finalists’ stories were judged for accuracy, writing quality, enterprise and innovation.
On Tuesday, June 8th, shortly after arriving in the city, the finalists met with the judges for orientation and assignments. This year, the on-the-spot assignment was to tell an immigrant’s story. The finalists’ press interview took place with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday morning. The final deadline was Friday at 6:00 p.m. by which point the news story from the interview, a personality/profile of Mayor Bloomberg, and the spot news piece were due. The judges made their decisions by Friday afternoon and the winners were announced at the awards ceremony that evening.
The first through third place winners were awarded scholarships of $5,000, $4,000, and $3,000 respectively and are featured below. The five finalists who earned $1,500 scholarship awards were: Andrew Astleford from University of Missouri, Allison Gatlin from Arizona State University, Nathan Rott from University of Montana, Rachel Stark from Indiana University and Roman Stubbs from University of Montana. Two additional awards of $1,000 each were given to Roman Stubbs for Article of the Year and Hayley Peterson for Best Reporting Technique for their articles submitted in the monthly competitions.
