HEARST JOURNALISM  AWARDS  PROGRAM

NEWS  RELEASE

San Francisco – The top 10 winners in college feature writing were announced today in the 50^th annual William Randolph Hearst Foundation's Journalism Awards Program, in which 110 undergraduate journalism programs at colleges and universities across the nation are eligible to participate.

First Place has been awarded to BRAD  LUTTRELL, of University of Kentucky.  He will receive a $2,000 scholarship for his winning article titled “The State of Coal” published in The Kentucky Kernel.  University of Kentucky will receive a matching grant, as do the journalism departments of all scholarship winners.  Brad Luttrell graduated in the spring of 2009, and consequently is not eligible to participate in the Championship.  As a result, the second place winner, LISA  GARTNER, from Northwestern University, who will receive a $1,500 scholarship for her article titled “Living the Dream” from Texasmonthly.com, qualifies for the National Writing Championship which will take place in New York City in June 2010.

Other top ten scholarship winners are:

BRIAN  SPEGELE, Indiana University, third place, $1,000 scholarship

AUBREY  WHELAN, Pennsylvania State University, fourth place, $750 scholarship

KENDALL  WRIGHT, Arizona State University, fifth place, $600 scholarship

PAUL  SCHRODT, Northwestern University, sixth place, $500 scholarship

JESSE  TRIMBLE, University of Kansas, seventh place, $500 scholarship

JILL  LASTER, University of Kentucky, eighth place, $500 scholarship

KEVIN  BRONK, University of Oregon, ninth place, $500 scholarship

KELSEY  ALLEN, University of Missouri, tenth place, $500 scholarship

University of Kentucky received first place in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition with the highest accumulated student points from the first competition of the academic year.  They are followed by:  Northwestern University; Arizona State University; University of Oregon; Indiana University; Pennsylvania State University; Kent State University; University of Kansas; University of Illinois (tie); University of Missouri (tie).

The Hearst Journalism Awards Program is conducted under the auspices of accredited schools of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication, and fully funded and administered by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation.  It consists of six monthly writing competitions, three photojournalism competitions, four broadcast news competitions and one multimedia competition, with Championship finals in all divisions except multimedia.  The program awards more than $550,000 in scholarships and grants annually.

Judging the writing competition this year are:  Jeff Cohen, Executive Vice President and Editor, Houston Chronicle, TX;  Peter Bhatia, Executive Editor, The Oregonian, Portland, OR; and Jennifer Sizemore, Vice President/Editor in Chief, MSNBC.com and Executive Producer, NBC News.

There were a record 142 students from 75 universities who participated in the program's first competition of this academic year.  Samples of winning work can be viewed in the monthly winners section of our website, www.hearstawards.org, which is updated shortly after each competition.

Contact: Jan C. Watten, Program Director

415.908.4560

jwatten@hearstfdn.org