J-School students grab 2 more Hearst awards

Tim Kupsick

Zach Franz

photos by Lizz Rauf

By Emily Darrell and James Laber
J-School Web Reporters

Two more UM journalism students can be added to the list of this year's Hearst Award recipients.

Tim Kupsick, a senior in photojournalism, won 3rd place in the news and sports photo competition. Zach Franz, a senior print journalism major, won 8th place in the in-depth writing competition.

The 47-year-old Hearst Journalism Awards program offers undergraduate students at more than 100 universities across the country the chance to compete for scholarship money and national recognition of their work. The competition includes six monthly contests in writing, three in photojournalism, and four in broadcast journalism.

Kupsick, Montana Kaimin photographer and Web designer, placed 3rd out of 50 competitors and will receive a $1,000 scholarship for his photos.

“After I won, Dean (Jerry) Brown asked me if he could borrow a thousand dollars,” he said.

“I told him he had his own thousand coming, so he didn’t need mine,” Kupsick added, referring to the $1,000 matching grant UM’s School of Journalism will receive from the Hearst Journalism Awards Program for Kupsick’s work.

Kupsick received the award for his work at the Bakersfield Californian while interning as a photojournalist last January through August.

His news photos were of a 14-unit apartment building that had caught fire and photos of a funeral for a young girl who was killed in a police car chase. For his sports photos, Kupsick snapped photos of a drag racer and a kayaker.

The photos of the funeral were difficult for Kupsick to take. He photographed the whole story, from the accident scene to the funeral, and was the only journalist able to talk to the mother of the victim and get quotes from her.

“The hardest photos to take emotionally were the ones of the girl’s funeral,” said Kupsick. “After (the story), I said that I didn’t want to do anymore funerals.”

Kupsick is now eligible for the semi-final round of competition. After he graduates in December Kupsick hopes to gain another internship and eventually look for a photojournalist position.

Franz, a senior majoring in print journalism, said that when he signed up to take the Native News Honors Project last spring, he knew the pressure was on to create quality work. 

"Every year they do great, “Franz said of the Native News project. They win awards every year.”

In 2005 the Native News publication from the year before won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy College Journalism Award. The class also has produced several Hearst Award winners.   

"Also, they print [the stories] in all the major newspapers in Montana, so it's something like 100,000 copies,” Franz said.  “It's exciting to have 100,000 copies of your story published. Also it's a chance to do a big, important story." 

Franz's winning story, "Skipping Out and Missing Out,"  explored the problem of school truancy on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana.

Though Franz didn't have a particular interest in Native issues before taking the Native News class, he developed one while working on his story. Within the Native American community there are many important stories that aren’t getting the media attention they deserve, he said.

His Hearst award win, which came with a $500 scholarship, was a big surprise, Franz said.

"The whole semester that I was doing that class, I felt I was bumbling my way through it, because that class does have such a history of excellence and the person that did that reservation the previous year won a Hearst award,” he said. “There's a long line of winners from that class, so you feel like there's pressure on you. You really feel like you have to write a good story. It's not enough to write a mediocre story."

Franz is modest about his win. “I spent so much time with that story it's hard to have a perspective about it,” he said.

The hardest part of the story, he said, was interviewing students on the reservation, whom he found reticent about speaking with him and his partner, Mike Greener, who took the story's accompanying photos. 

Franz will graduate from the J-School this spring and hopes to get a job as a crime reporter on a daily newspaper, preferably in Montana. He currently reports on crime for the Kaimin, where he has worked for three semesters.

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