San Francisco – The William Randolph Hearst Foundation has announced the finalists selected in the 2015-2016 Journalism Awards Program’s radio news and features competition. The top five radio winners, selected from 50 entrants from 30 schools, win scholarship awards and qualify for the 2016 Hearst Journalism Awards Championship this June, along with television, writing, photojournalism and multimedia finalists.

The top five radio winners qualifying for the Championship are:

First Place, $2,600 award, Jacob McAuliffe, Arizona State University

Second Place, $2,000 award, Tommy Rezac, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Third Place, $1,500 award, Evan Hummel, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Fourth Place, $1,000 award, Martha Daniel, University of Southern California

Fifth Place, $1,000 award, Jasmine Turner, Howard University

The schools of all award-winning finalists receive matching grants. 

Finalists receiving certificates of merit are:

Sixth Place, Louis Fernandez, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Seventh Place, Charles Smart, University of Connecticut

Eighth Place, Jessica Arnold, Pennsylvania State University

Ninth Place, Emily Proctor, University of Montana

Tenth Place, Ben Ebert, University of Southern California

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill placed first in the Intercollegiate Broadcast Competition with the highest accumulated student points in the first television and radio competitions. They are followed by: Arizona State University, University of Southern California, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, University of Florida, Pennsylvania State University, University of Missouri, Michigan State University, Louisiana State University, Howard University. The final Intercollegiate Broadcast winners will be announced after the second television competition. The top three winners receive $10,000, $4,000, and $2,000 in prizes respectively.

The judges, all broadcast professionals, are: Marci Burdick, Senior Vice President of Broadcasting, Schurz Communications, Inc., Michawaka, IN; Harvey Nagler, Vice President, Radio, CBS News, New York, NY; and Fred Young, retired Senior Vice President of News, Hearst Television Inc., Yardley, PA.

The 56^th annual Hearst Journalism Awards Program is held in 108 member universities of the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication with accredited undergraduate journalism programs. The Broadcast News Competition was added in 1988 to the Program which also includes writing, photojournalism, and multimedia competitions and offers awards totaling up to $500,000 annually.