National Hearst Contest Winners

NATIONAL HEARST CONTEST WINNERS

Four University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media students have been honored with an award in the national Hearst journalism contest.

The students won 8th place in the category of Team Multimedia/News or Enterprise for a project about Puerto Rico’s recovery after Hurricane Maria. Website content included short and in-depth text articles, videos, photographs, graphics and timelines.

The students on the team were journalism majors Devna Bose, Brittany Brown and Christian Johnson, and IMC major Hayden Benge, who designed the website. All four students had leadership positions at the Student Media Center in 2019. The Hearst competition is considered one of the most prestigious in college journalism.

Bose, Brown and Benge graduated in May 2019. Bose is a reporter for the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina through the Report

for America fellowship program. Brown just finished the first year of her M.A. in the Southern Studies documentary program at UM.

Benge is an account coordinator for Saxum, a marketing communications agency, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Johnson graduated in May 2020 and continues to work as a photographer intern for UM marketing and communications.

The faculty leaders for the project were Patricia Thompson, assistant dean and assistant professor, and Iveta Imre, assistant professor. Recent journalism graduate Ariel Cobbert participated as photography mentor. Cobbert, from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, is now a photographer at the Commercial Appeal in Memphis.

Jasmine Karlowski, a Study Abroad staff member and M.F.A. graduate student, helped with translations while working on a mini-documentary about the trip.