Photo by Tim Kupsick

Trevor Oliver holds a flag presented to him at his father's funeral in Bozeman, Mont. Staff Sgt. Travis Atkins was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq.

Two UM journalists garner top-20 finishes in January’s national Hearst competitions

Native News story, sports photos take honors

By Whitney Bermes
J-School Web Reporter

Outstanding work by UM Journalism students earned more accolades as a senior and recent graduate placed in the top 20 of the latest rounds of the prestigious Hearst journalism awards.

Senior Jessica Mayrer tied for fifteenth place in In-Depth writing, and December graduate Tim Kupsick tied for thirteenth place in sports and news photojournalism in the 48th annual William Randolph Hearst Journalism Award Program.

Mayrer submitted an article about the Fort Peck Reservation, which was published in May as part of the school’s annual Native News Honors Project. Students in the project examined the rocky relationship between the Bureau of Indian Affairs and residents of Montana’s seven Indian reservations. Mayrer’s award-winning story, “High and Dry,” focused on the defective BIA irrigation system on Fort Peck and the effects its shortcomings have on local farmers.

“I did a whole lot of research,” Mayrer said. “Humanizing a really complex system was challenging.”

Mayrer is in her second semester as a news editor for the Montana Kaimin. She was the higher education reporter spring semester.

Kupsick submitted four photos: one of a house fire, one of a military funeral and two sports photos. 

Kupsick made it all the way to the semifinals of last year’s Hearst awards with photos of a grieving mother and of an apartment fire in California.

“I was duplicating what I shot before,” Kupsick said of his most recent award-winning photos. “I liked the compositions.”

Photo by Tim Kupsick

Marc Mariani, a Havre, Mont. native, makes his first touchdown catch as a Montana Grizzly against Northern Colorado.

Kupsick, who worked for the Kaimin for three and a half years and had a semester-long internship at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, now works for the Casper Star-Tribune in Wyoming.

After leading all schools in the Intercollegiate Writing Competition after the second and third rounds, UM now sits in fourth place. Schools receive points for students who place in the competition and the schools’ ranks are based on these accumulated points.

Two more categories remain in this year’s writing competition: personality/profile and spot news. Photojournalism has completed two of three competitions for the year. The last is the picture stories/series category.

The Hearst Foundation administers six writing contests, three photojournalism contests and four broadcast competitions. New this year is a multimedia competition, which will be decided in May. The program distributes more than $500,000 in awards each year to undergraduate journalism majors across the country. More than 100 accredited journalism programs are eligible to compete.

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