NEWS RELEASE
2012 HEARST FEATURE WRITING WINNERS NAMED
San Francisco – The top 10 winners in college feature writing were announced today in the 53rd annual William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program, in which 106 undergraduate journalism programs at colleges and universities across the nation are eligible to participate.
First Place has been awarded to MELISSA ABBEY, a senior at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Melissa will receive a $2,600 scholarship for her winning article titled “From a cardboard box to loving arms” published in ReeseNews.org. UNC will receive a matching grant, as do the journalism departments of all scholarship winners. Melissa also qualifies for the National Writing Championship which takes place in San Francisco in June 2013.
Other top five scholarship winners are:
Alex Orlando, University of Florida, second place, $2,000 scholarship
Faiz Siddiqui, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, third place, $1,500 scholarship
Christie Megura, University of Missouri, fourth place, $1,000 scholarship
Eli Epstein, New York University, fifth place, $1,000 scholarship
The sixth through tenth place winners receive certificates of merit:
Hannah Wise, University of Kansas, sixth place
Rachel Hoffman, Northwestern University, seventh place
Veronica Jones, Arizona State University, eighth place
Brittany Horn, Pennsylvania State University, ninth place
Nate Hopper, Syracuse University, tenth place
The University of North Carolina received first place in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition with the highest accumulated student points in the first competition. They are followed by: University of Florida; Arizona State University; Northwestern University; University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Pennsylvania State University; University of Kansas; ; University of Missouri; Drake University; New York University.
The Hearst Journalism Awards Program is conducted under the auspices of accredited schools of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication and fully funded and administered by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. It consists of five monthly writing competitions, two photojournalism competitions, three broadcast news competitions and four multimedia competitions, with Championship finals in all divisions. The program awards up to $500,000 in scholarships and grants annually.
Judging the writing competition this year are: Ward Bushee, Editor and Executive Vice President, The San Francisco Chronicle; Marty Kaiser, Editor and Senior Vice President, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and John Temple, Managing Editor, The Washington Post.
There were 142 students from a record 76 universities who participated in the program’s first competition of this academic year. Samples of winning work can be viewed in the monthly winners section of the Web site, which is updated shortly after each competition.
Contact:
Jan C. Watten, Program Director
415.908.4565
jwatten@hearstfdn.org
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