School of Media News

With a first-place finish in multimedia and a third-place finish in photojournalism, WKU’s School of Journalism & Broadcasting placed fifth overall in the 53rd annual Hearst Journalism Awards Program.

WKU has finished among the nation’s top eight in the Hearst overall competition for 20 consecutive years and won the national title in 2005, 2001 and 2000.

The top 10 finishers in the 2012-13 Hearst overall competition are: Penn State, North Carolina, Missouri, Nebraska, WKU, Arizona State, Indiana, Kent State, Florida and Syracuse.

WKU won the Hearst Intercollegiate Multimedia Competition for the second consecutive year and will receive a $10,000 award. The 2012-13 multimedia top 10 finishers are: WKU, North Carolina, Nebraska, Missouri, Penn State, Syracuse, Kent State, Montana, Arizona State and Oregon.

WKU photojournalism student Jabin Botsford, a senior from Knoxville, Tenn., has been selected as one of six finalists who will compete for the Hearst National Photojournalism Championship June 3-7 in San Francisco. Ten WKU students have won individual championships in 1987, 1988, 1991, 1992, 1996, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2010.

The top 10 schools in the 2012-13 Hearst Intercollegiate Photojournalism Competition are: Missouri, Penn State, WKU, North Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska, Kent State, Oregon, Minnesota, Iowa State and Florida. WKU, which received a $2,000 award, has won the Hearst photojournalism competition 20 times in the past 24 years.

Often called the “Pulitzers of College Journalism,” the William Randolph Hearst Foundation’s Journalism Awards Program holds yearlong competitions in writing, photojournalism, broadcast news and multimedia for journalism undergraduates. Journalism schools accumulating the most points earned by their students in each category are designated the winners of the Intercollegiate Competitions. The Hearst program, in which 106 undergraduate journalism programs across the nation are eligible to participate, is conducted under the auspices of accredited schools of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication.