WKU News

Western Kentucky University students finished first and third in the second multimedia competition of the 2024-2025 Hearst Journalism Awards Program.

Brett Phelps, a senior from Bardstown, won the Innovative Multimedia Competition and received a $3,000 scholarship for the piece titled A New Road to Travel. Phelps also qualified for the National Multimedia Championship in June.

Madeline Powell, a senior from Louisville, finished third and received a $1,500 award for Life Plays On. WKU’s School of Media & Communication receives matching awards. 

After two of four multimedia competitions, WKU is in second place in the Intercollegiate Multimedia Competition behind the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Often called “The Pulitzers of college journalism,” the 65^th annual Hearst Journalism Awards Program offers 14 competitions annually including four writing, two photo, one audio, two television, four multimedia and one podcast awarding up to $700,000 in scholarships, matching grants and stipends. Currently, there are 105 universities of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication with accredited undergraduate journalism programs are eligible to participate in the Hearst competitions.

WKU’s School of Media & Communication continued its tradition of national success in the Hearst Journalism Awards Program with a sixth-place finish in the 2024 Overall Intercollegiate Competition. WKU has placed in the top eight overall for 31 straight years with four overall championships in 2000, 2001, 2005 and 2018, has won the Intercollegiate Photojournalism Competition 29 times in the past 35 years and has won the Intercollegiate Multimedia Competition nine times since it was added in 2010.

WKU students have won 17 Hearst individual national championships since 1985 — photojournalism in 1987, 1988, 1991, 1992, 1996, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2014 and 2016; multimedia in 2015, 2023 and 2024; writing in 1985; and radio news in 2006.

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

-WKU- 

Western Kentucky University prides itself on positioning its students, faculty and staff for long term success. As a student-centered, applied research university, WKU helps 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.