2018 Championship Writing Winners
From the 606 writing entries received in the 2017-2018 writing competitions, the following finalists’ competition articles qualified them for the Hearst National Writing Championship in San Francisco, where they competed for additional scholarship awards. This special event consisted of an on-the-spot assignment and a press interview. The finalists’ articles were judged for accuracy, writing quality, enterprise and innovation.
On Sunday, June 3rd, shortly after arriving in San Francisco, the finalists met with the judges for orientation and assignments. This year, the on-the-spot assignment was to tell a story about how the bay area arts community is changing.
The finalists’ press interview took place with civil rights attorney John Burris. The final deadline was Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. by which point a news story from the interview, a
personality/profile of Mr. Burris and the spot news piece were due. After reviewing the articles Wednesday morning, the judges made their decisions, and the winners were
announced at the awards ceremony that evening.
The first-through-third place winners were awarded scholarships of $10,000, $7,500, and $5,000 respectively. The five finalists earned $1,500 scholarship awards. Two finalists were awarded additional $1,000 awards for Article of the Year and Best Reporting Technique for pieces submitted in the monthly competitions.
All winners and finalists are featured below.
