Hearst Opinion Writing Competition Winners Named

NEWS  RELEASE

2010  HEARST  OPINION  WRITING  WINNERS  NAMED

San Francisco – The top 10 winners in college opinion writing were announced today in the 51st annual William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program, in which 110 undergraduate journalism programs at colleges and universities across the nation are eligible to participate.

First Place has been awarded to CAITLIN  JOHNSTON of Indiana University.  Caitlin will receive a $2,600 scholarship for her winning article titled “The Home Front” published in Inside Magazine.  Indiana University will receive a matching grant, as do the journalism departments of all scholarship winners.  Caitlin also qualifies for the National Writing Championship which takes place in San Francisco this June.

Other top five scholarship winners are:

JADE  MCDOWELL, Brigham Young University, second place, $2,000 scholarship

CASSIDY  HERRINGTON, University of Kentucky, third place, $1,500 scholarship

JAMES  SOJOURNER, Colorado State University, fourth place, $1,000 scholarship

RACHAEL  MITCHELL, University of Oregon, fifth place, $1,000 scholarship

The sixth through tenth place winners receive certificates of merit:

SARAH  FRIER, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, sixth place

JOSH  PHERIGO, University of North Texas, seventh place

ALEX  McDANIEL, University of Mississippi, eighth place

CALLIE  SCHWEITZER, University of Southern California, ninth place

AMBER  GIBSON, Northwestern University, tenth place

Indiana University received first place in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition with the highest accumulated student points from the first two writing competitions of the academic year. They are followed by:  Pennsylvania State University; University of Kansas; University of Oregon; Arizona State University; Brigham Young University; University of Iowa; Northwestern University; University of Mississippi; University of Missouri.

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 six monthly writing competitions, three photojournalism competitions, three broadcast news competitions and two multimedia competitions, with Championship finals in all divisions.  The program awards up to $500,000 in scholarships and grants annually.

Judging the writing competitions this year are:  Peter Bhatia, Editor, The Oregonian; Ward Bushee, Editor and Executive Vice President, The San Francisco Chronicle; and Jennifer Sizemore, Vice President/Editor in Chief, MSNBC.com and Executive Producer, NBC News.

There were 113 students from 61 universities who participated in the program’s second writing competition.  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