NEWS RELEASE
HEARST SPOT NEWS WRITING WINNERS NAMED
San Francisco – The top 10 winners in college Spot News writing have been announced in the50th annual William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program, in which 110 undergraduate journalism programs at universities across the nation are eligible to participate.
First Place has been awarded to ANDREW R. MCGILL, a senior from the Pennsylvania StateUniversity. He will receive a $2,000 scholarship for his winning article, “We Will Never Forget Him” from The Morning Call. Pennsylvania State University will receive a matching grant, as do the journalism departments of all scholarship winners. Andrew has qualified to participate in the Hearst National Writing Championship in New York City this June.
Other scholarship winners are:
KEVIN CIRILLI, Pennsylvania State University, second place, $1,500 scholarship
CAROLYN CRIST, University of Georgia, third place, $1,000 scholarship
KRIS KNOWLTON, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, fourth place, $750 scholarship
SARAH HUTCHINS, Indiana University, fifth place, $600 scholarship
CHELSEA SMITH, Arizona State University, sixth place, $500 scholarship
ROBERT LONGORIA, University of Texas, Austin, seventh place, $500 scholarship
LAUREN CLASON, Indiana University, eighth place, $500 scholarship
BEN SLIVNICK, University of Maryland, ninth place, $500 scholarship
DAVID MCSWANE, Colorado State University, tenth place, $500 scholarship
Indiana University has won first place in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition with the highest accumulated student points from the 2009-2010 writing competitions. They are followed by: Northwestern University; Arizona State University; University of Missouri; University of Oregon; Pennsylvania State University, University of Georgia; University of Montana; University of Kentucky; University of Iowa. The top three winners earn $10,000, $5,000, and $2,500 respectively. The top ten winners receive medallions.
The 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 W.R. Hearst Foundation. It consists of six monthly writing, three photojournalism, four broadcast news competitions and one multimedia competition, with championship finals in all divisions except multimedia. The program awards up to $550,000 in scholarships and grants annually.
Judging the writing competition this year are: Jeff Cohen, Executive Vice President and Editor,Houston Chronicle, TX; Peter Bhatia, Editor, The Oregonian, Portland, OR; and Jennifer Sizemore, Vice President/Editor in Chief, MSNBC.com and Executive Producer, NBC News.
76 students from 47 universities participated in the Spot News writing competition. For samples of winning work, please check the monthly winners section of the Web site, which is updated shortly after each competition.
Contact:
Jan Watten, program director
415-908-4560
jwatten@hearstfdn.org
