Journalism Students Win Hearst Title

Posted on July 27, 2016

The UNC School of Media and Journalism has won the 2016 national championship in the Hearst Journalism Awards competition, considered the Pulitzers of collegiate journalism.

It is the school’s sixth overall national championship, its second consecutive and its fourth since 2010. UNC is the only school to have finished in the top five overall every year since 2004.

This time around, the school finished overall first in photojournalism, first in broadcast, second in multimedia and fifth in writing. The wins earn the school $24,000 in awards from Hearst.

Six UNC students were among the 28 from across the nation competing in San Francisco May 30 through June 3 in individual competitions. Two UNC MJ-school students won individual national championships.

C.B. Cotton ’16 of Jacksonville, N.C., won in broadcast news. Emily Rhyne ’16 of Wilson won in multimedia that comes with a $5,000 award. Each earned a $5,000 award. Rhyne also won a $1,000 award for Best Multimedia Story of the Year.

Two students posted top 3 individual national honors in the photojournalism category.

Dillon Deaton ’16 of Asheville took second place; Tegan Johnston ’16 of Raleigh was third; Jaclyn Lee, a senior from Newbury Park, Calif., and Ben Smart ’16 of Fountain Hills, Ariz. were honored as finalists in the Television Broadcast News Championship. Smart also won for Best Use of Television for News Coverage.

The championships are the culmination of the 2015-16 Hearst Journalism Awards competitions, which are held among the 108 member colleges and universities of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication with accredited undergraduate journalism programs.

The Hearst program holds year-long competitions in writing, photojournalism, radio news, television news and multimedia for undergraduates. Schools with the most points earned by their students in each category are designated the winners of the intercollegiate competitions.

The William Randolph Hearst Foundation was established by its namesake in 1948. Since then, the Hearst Foundations have contributed more than $1 billion to numerous educational programs, health and medical care, human services and the arts in every state.

The Hearst Journalism Awards Program was founded in 1960 to foster journalism education through scholarships for outstanding college students. Since its inception, the program has distributed more than $12 million in scholarships and grants for the very best work by student journalists.

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