WKU once again finished in the top five of the Hearst Journalism Awards 2025-26 Intercollegiate Overall competition, extending a streak of excellence that has stretched through five decades.
Hearst judges’ assessments of WKU students’ work placed WKU in the No. 5 spot in the Intercollegiate Overall competition, behind the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Florida, Syracuse University and the University of Missouri. Following WKU’s fifth-place finish were Pennsylvania State University, Michigan State University, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Southern California and the University of Montana.
WKU won the Intercollegiate Multimedia competition and tied for seventh place in the Intercollegiate Photojournalism competition.
The Hearst Journalism Awards judge the quality of individual student work, and those students’ performance across the various categories determines the overall placement of programs in the Intercollegiate Overall competition among 104 accredited undergraduate journalism programs.
WKU has placed in the top eight overall for 33 straight years, with four overall championships in 2000, 2001, 2005 and 2018. In 2025, WKU placed second.
WKU’s history of success in Hearst competitions includes winning the Intercollegiate Photojournalism Competition 30 times in the past 37 years and winning the Intercollegiate Multimedia Competition 10 times since it was added in 2010.
Congratulations to our friends and colleagues in the WKU School of Media & Communication and especially to our students for their outstanding work that consistently places WKU among the elite undergraduate journalism programs nationwide.