Senior broadcast communications major Randy Gyllenhaal became the first Elon student to make it to the finals of the Hearst Journalism Awards Competition this year.
Gyllenhaal will travel to San Francisco in June, where he will compete against four other finalists for more scholarship money. In order to make it to the final round, Gyllenhaal had to have a top five finish in the hard news television competition (he placed third), which earned him a $1,000 scholarship. Then, the top five hard news and feature stories were entered into the semifinal round, and of those 10 the best five were chosen for the finals.
Finalists are given spot news stories to complete in San Francisco, with the best earning more scholarship money.
The top five Hearst Awards finish is the latest achievement for Gyllenhaal this year, who also won a prestigious scholarship from the Radio and Television News Directors Association, was part of the award-winning Phoenix14News team, which the Broadcast Education Association named tops in the nation, won the D’Angelo Scholarship from the School of Communications and won a Scripps Howard Foundation scholarship.
“Randy represents the bright future of broadcast journalism,” said assistant professor and Phoenix14News adviser Rich Landesberg. “He is a terrific story teller, a great writer and he has a fine eye for the visual elements that raise his work far beyond the ordinary. Randy is also an excellent student and a nice person. It is very exciting to see such a deserving student have this kind of success.”