Senior wins Hearst’s first multimedia competition, helps propel the College to second place overall
Photojournalism senior Tim Hussin drove to Eldorado, Texas, the week after authorities removed more than 400 children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch. An intern for Salt Lake City’s Deseret News, he joined a staff photographer and reporters that dry and windy April afternoon for the first, exclusive interviews granted by the devastated mothers.
Hussin and the Deseret staff spoke with William and Merrill Jessop, two of the leaders of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, about how they were going to cover the story while an elderly woman served them tuna melts and potato salad.
The video Hussin captured that day at the ranch became part of a package of multimedia pieces he produced in Salt Lake City that won first place in the Hearst Journalism Awards Program’s inaugural multimedia competition. In one of its most successful years in the Hearst competition, the College earned second place overall. The individual winners included John Cox, JM 2008, who won first place in the National Writing Championship, journalism senior Kim Wilmath, who took second in the Spot News category, and telecommunication junior Miles Doran, who placed in the top five in the radio championship.
The contest features three rounds, according to the Hearst Journalism Awards Program Web site. First, students compete in monthly contests in the writing, photo, multimedia, radio and television categories. Next, the winners of the photo and broadcast monthly contests send in a portfolio of their work to be judged in the semifinals. In the writing contest, the first-place winners in each of the competitions advance directly to the championship.
The top winners in each category gather in San Francisco in the summer to compete in the national championship.
The 48-year-old contest added the multimedia category to keep up with current professional standards, said Associate Prof. John Freeman, who coordinated the multimedia entry.
“The thing I like about multimedia is that you’re in control of all of it,” Hussin said. “You’re not just taking a picture and turning it in to the paper. It’s all you. You’re telling a story with stills and audio and video, instead of trying to take one picture to sum it up.”
Hussin wanted to intern with the Deseret News, in part, because the paper encourages its staff to experiment with multimedia. He spent that spring learning how to use video.
“Tim’s video was extremely emotional,” said Deseret News Photo Editor Ravell Call. “It was immediately in demand throughout the world. The online hits to that story and video overloaded our Web site. We soon shared Tim’s video with our sister TV station and with CNN.”
Hussin, who also won second place in the Hearst National Championship Photojournalism SemiFinals, returned to Gainesville after completing a summer internship in Denver at the Rocky Mountain News. He plans to graduate this semester (Fall 2008).
In June, two other College students flew to San Francisco to compete in the program’s national championships.
Doran tackled a story on the rising cost of food and the way people and restaurants were coping.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “I had called alumni working at stations across the country, and they helped a lot with the planning.”
Doran, who interned this summer at “CBS Evening News” in New York, took fourth place in the Radio Broadcast News Championship. He plans to submit to Hearst in the next two contests.
In the Hearst National Writing Championship, Cox competed against seven other writers, completing three stories in less than 48 hours (see Alumni Angle).
“They treat you so well – put you up in a five-star hotel downtown, take you to unbelievably fancy restaurants,” Cox said. “But until you’re done with the stories, you can’t really enjoy it.”
Cox’s national writing championship was the College’s first since Jamie Malernee, JM 1999, won it in 1999.
Malernee, a general assignment writer for the Sun-Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, said the format for the writing competition has not changed much in the past decade, nor does she think the elements of good journalism – accuracy, clarity, a compelling story – ever will.
“You still have to go out there and pound the pavement to get the goods,” she said. “What has changed the most in the past 10 years is the way stories are presented. We have to think more about graphics, photos, online/interactive components, video, audio, etc. Now, there are often two newspapers to report for – the online version and the traditional paper.”
This article was originally published in the Fall 2008 issue of communigator.
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