Department of Music News

Western Kentucky University student Rhiannon Johnston won the Multimedia Innovative Storytelling Competition of the 2023-2024 Hearst Journalism Awards Program.

Johnston, a senior advertising and photojournalism major from Louisville, received a $3,000 scholarship for the winning entry The Road Home and qualifies for the National Multimedia Championship which will be held this June in San Francisco. WKU’s School of Media & Communication receives a matching award.

WKU student Sean McInnis, a junior photojournalism major from Louisville, finished eighth in the competition.

WKU is in third place in the Intercollegiate Multimedia Competition after two of four multimedia competitions this year. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is in first place and Syracuse University is in second.

The Journalism Awards Program, now in its 64th year, added multimedia to the competitions in 2010. Often called “The Pulitzers of college journalism,” the program also includes five writing, one audio, two television, and two photojournalism competitions offering up to $700,000 in scholarships, matching grants and stipends. 105 member universities of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication with accredited undergraduate journalism programs are eligible to participate in the Hearst competitions.

With a third-place finish in the Hearst Journalism Awards Program’s 2022-2023 Overall Intercollegiate Competition, WKU has ranked in the top five nationally for 14 consecutive years and has placed in the top eight for 30 straight years with four overall championships in 2000, 2001, 2005 and 2018.

In 2023, WKU won the Intercollegiate Photojournalism Competition for the seventh straight year and 29th time in the past 34 years and tied for first in the Intercollegiate Multimedia Competition. WKU has won the Hearst multimedia championship nine times since it was added in 2010.

WKU students have won 16 Hearst individual national championships since 1985 — photojournalism in 1987, 1988, 1991, 1992, 1996, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2014 and 2016; multimedia in 2015 and 2023; writing in 1985; and radio news in 2006.

Contact: School of Media & Communication, (270) 745-4144.

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Western Kentucky University prides itself on positioning its students, faculty and staff for long term success. As a student-centered, applied research university, our students expand on classroom learning by integrating education with real-world applications in the communities we serve. Our hilltop campus is located in Bowling Green, Kentucky, which was recently named by Reader’s Digest as one of the nicest towns in America, just an hour’s drive from Nashville, Tennessee.