NEWS  RELEASE  

2012  HEARST  PERSONALITY/PROFILE  WRITING  WINNERS  NAMED 

San Francisco – The top 10 winners in college personality/profile writing were announced today in the 52nd 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 RACHEL  STARK of Indiana University.  Rachel will receive a $2,600 scholarship for her winning article “Runner’s High” published in Inside Magazine. Indiana University will receive a matching grant, as do the journalism departments of all scholarship winners. Rachel graduated in the spring of 2011, and consequently is not eligible to participate in the Championship per our guidelines.  As a result, the second place winner, JONATHAN SILMAN, from University of Florida, who will receive a $2,000 scholarship for his article titled “Telling the Story” from the Valley News, qualifies for the National Writing Championship this June in San Francisco.

Other top five scholarship winners are:

BIZ  CARSON, Indiana University, third place, $1,500 scholarship

ZACH  FELDMAN, Pennsylvania State University, fourth place, $1,000 scholarship

STEPHEN  DETHRAGE, University of Alabama, fifth place, $1,000 scholarship

The sixth through tenth place winners receive certificates of merit:

ALEXANDER  KATZ, Northwestern University, sixth place

KATHERINE  MARTIN, University of Alabama, seventh place

BLAKE  URSCH, University of Missouri, eighth place

PAUL  CASELLA, Pennsylvania State University, ninth place

WILLIAM  CAREY, Northwestern University, tenth place

Indiana University received first place in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition with the highest accumulated student points in the first four writing competitions.  They are followed by: Pennsylvania State University; Northwestern University; University of Kansas; Arizona State University; University of Missouri; University of Nebraska; University of Oregon; University of Florida; University of Montana.  The final intercollegiate results will be announced in April after the Breaking News Writing competition.

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:  Jennifer Sizemore, Vice President/Editor-in-Chief, MSNBC.com and Executive Producer, NBC News; Ward Bushee, Editor and Executive Vice President, The San Francisco Chronicle; and Marty Kaiser, Editor and Senior Vice President, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

There were 118 students from 65 universities who participated in this competition.  Samples of winning work can be viewed in the monthly winners section of our Web site, www.hearstawards.org, which is updated shortly after each competition.

 

Contact:
Jan C. Watten, program director
415.908.4565
jwatten@hearstfdn.org