COLLEGE PARK — The Hearst Journalism Awards Program recently announced the results of its 2023-24 intercollegiate competitions, and the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism placed in three categories.
Merrill College finished seventh in the Intercollegiate Audio and Television competition, ninth in the Intercollegiate Writing competition, and 10th in the Intercollegiate Overall competition.
Often called “The Pulitzers of college journalism,” the Hearst program holds yearlong competitions in writing, photojournalism, audio, television and multimedia for journalism undergraduates. The points earned by individual students in the monthly competitions determine each discipline’s intercollegiate ranking.
The Intercollegiate Overall winners are the schools with the highest accumulated student points from the 1,315 entries submitted this year.
Merrill College earned its seventh-place finish in the audio and television competition thanks to three students who placed in monthly contests for their work with the Capital News Service broadcast bureau. Kevin McNulty ’23 finished sixth and Keara Bruno ’24 tied for 19th in Hearst’s Television I competition. Tolulope Ajayi ’24 tied for 11th place in the Television II contest.
Merrill placed ninth in the writing contest after four students made the top 10 in their respective contests.
Ross O'Keefe ’23 placed fifth in the Sports competition to earn a $1,000 scholarship. The team of Shane Connuck ’23 and Blake Townsend ’22 finished fifth in the Investigative Reporting contest to win a $1,000 scholarship. Both entries won for stories in the “Gambling on Campus” project from Merrill College’s Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism, Howard Center for Investigative Journalism and CNS.
Angel Gingras ’24 took sixth place in the Explanatory Reporting competition for her CNS story, “As Laurel Park readies for Maryland Million, experts discuss safety of troubled sport.”
The Hearst Journalism Awards Program operates under the auspices of the accredited schools of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication. Presently, 105 colleges and universities with accredited undergraduate journalism schools are eligible to participate in the Hearst Journalism Awards Program. Funded and administered for 64 years by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Journalism Program awards up to $700,000 in scholarships, grants and stipends annually.
For more information, contact:
Josh Land
joshland@umd.edu
301-405-1321