Two Huskers placed in the national Hearst Journalism Awards audio competition on Feb. 20, 2025, for their work at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. They competed against student entries from 104 other nationally accredited journalism programs.
Blake Mace of Council Bluffs, Iowa, won 5th place for "Severe WX Jumps in Midwest," a project for which he also received an award of excellence at the Broadcast Education Association's Festival of Media Arts.
Mace, a junior sports media and communication, and broadcasting major, will compete in Hearst's national audio news championship competition in San Francisco this summer.
Teddy Ball of Alvo, Nebraska, won 16th place for "Nebraska's Prison Overcrowding." The junior journalism, and sports media and communication major also won first place at the Festival of Media Arts in the radio hard news reporting category for the same project.
The Hearst Journalism Awards is an annual event that recognizes the best college journalism in categories such as feature writing, investigative journalism, photojournalism, multimedia, television and audio. Entries are evaluated based on their reporting, crafting, creativity and economy of expression.
The Hearst Journalism Awards Program was founded in 1960 to support, encourage and recognize journalism students across the United States. Today, the program awards more than $700,000 in scholarships and grants annually, and its competitions in writing, photojournalism and broadcasting are widely considered among the most prestigious in the country.
