WKU News

Two WKU students earned top 10 finishes in the Television Features Competition of the 2024-2025 Hearst Journalism Awards Program.

Adi Schanie, a senior from Louisville, finished third and received a $1,500 award. WKU’s School of Media & Communication receives a matching award. 

Cole McIntire, a senior from Union, finished ninth in the competition.

After the first of four broadcast competitions, WKU is in third place in the Intercollegiate Broadcast Competition behind the University of Missouri and Arizona State University. 

Often called “The Pulitzers of college journalism,” the Hearst Journalism Awards Program, now in its 65th year, added broadcast journalism competitions in 1988. In addition to the broadcast competitions, the program also includes four writing, two photojournalism, and four multimedia competitions, offering up to $700,000 in scholarships, matching grants, and stipends. The program is open to accredited undergraduate journalism programs from 105 universities within the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication.

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.

-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.