WKU News

WKU’s School of Media & Communication has won the Intercollegiate Photojournalism Competition for the 30th time in the past 36 years, and two WKU students earned awards in the Photojournalism Picture/Story Series Competition.

WKU had the highest accumulated student points in the two photo competitions of the 2024-2025 Hearst Journalism Awards Program and will receive a $10,000 award at the Intercollegiate Presentation held during the National Championships in June.

The other top 10 photojournalism finishers were University of Kentucky, University of Montana, University of Kansas, Ohio University, University of Missouri, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Syracuse University, University of Arizona and University of Florida.

Arthur Trickett-Wile, a post-baccalaureate photojournalism major from San Antonio, Texas, finished third in the Photojournalism Picture/Story Series Competition and will receive a $1,500 award. WKU’s School of Media & Communication will receive a matching award.

WKU student Sean McInnis, a senior photojournalism major from Louisville finished ninth in the competition.

Often called “The Pulitzers of college journalism,” the 65th 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 30 times in the past 36 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.