WKU News

With first-place finishes in all four events, WKU’s School of Journalism & Broadcasting has won the Hearst Intercollegiate Multimedia Competition for the fourth consecutive year.

WKU won the multimedia team reporting competition, the final multimedia contest of the 2014-15 Hearst Journalism Awards Program. WKU students also won this year’s other three multimedia categories – narrative storytelling, news and enterprise reporting.

Two WKU students — Katie Meek, a senior from Elizabethtown, and Adam Wolffbrandt, a senior from Lexington – are among five finalists who will compete for the Hearst National Multimedia Championship June 1-5 in San Francisco.

In the team reporting competition, WKU students Morgan Walker, Naomi Driessnack, Tyler Essary, Katie Meek, Adam Wolffbrandt, Jake Pope, Savannah Burke, Connor Choate, Everett McMillen Cislo, Dorothy Edwards, Luke Franke, Ditte Lysgaard-Holm, Alyssa Pointer, Kreable Young and Kasey Kinney won for their story Beyond Breath published on BeyondBreathProject.com. They will receive a $2,600 scholarship. WKU’s School of Journalism and Broadcasting will receive a matching grant and will receive a $10,000 award for winning the multimedia championship.

A WKU team of Kreable Young, Sam Osborne, Cameron Love, Mike Clark, Tyler Essary, Shelley Owens and Luke Franke placed sixth in the competition.

WKU won the Intercollegiate Multimedia Competition with the highest accumulated student points followed by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Arizona State University; University of Nebraska-Lincoln; University of Missouri; University of Oregon; Pennsylvania State University; Syracuse University; Temple University; and University of Montana.

Often called the “Pulitzers of College Journalism,” the Hearst Journalism Awards Program, now in its 55th year, includes two photojournalism, five writing, one radio, two television, and four multimedia competitions offering up to $500,000 in scholarships, matching grants and stipends; 108 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.

Earlier this spring, WKU won the Hearst Intercollegiate Photojournalism Competition for the 22nd time in the past 26 years. WKU has finished in the top five nationally in the Hearst overall competition for the past five years and in the top eight for 21 straight years including national championships in 2005, 2001 and 2000. The overall results are based on points accumulated in the Hearst competition’s combined writing-broadcasting-photojournalism-multimedia standings.

Contact: School of Journalism & Broadcasting, (270) 745-4144