Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: Tyler Junior College Entry Title: False Shooter and Swatting Entry Credit: Brooklyn Gundling, Abigail Smith, Grace Giles Judge Comment: This story exposed a troubling trend at Texas schools, the safety concerns and campus response. Good expanding on a breaking news event to tackled the broader issue! Additional value came from the use of video in this entry, as in-depth reporting not includes deeper, expansive reporting but use of multiple mediums.
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: Dallas College - Eastfield Entry Title: AI series Entry Credit: Mattheau Faught Judge Comment: Loved the cool art attached to each piece of this series! Using visuals to tell the story added to the depth of the project, which also provided extensive reflections on multiple aspects of AI, which is a very topical issue.
Place Name: Third Place Contestant Name: Texas Wesleyan University Entry Title: Campus Internet Outage Entry Credit: Hannah Parker, Chiara Watson Judge Comment: While this entry included multiple pieces of reporting, most were fairly short, covering the internet outage and its wide impacts to the campus community. It takes creativity to cover an issue from multiple angles like this, and determination to stay with the story.
Place Name: Honorable Mention Contestant Name: UT-Tyler Entry Title: UT Tyler Tenured Professor Accused of Hiring A Person To Teach Her Classes; New Senate Bill Complicates Firing Process Entry Credit: Nathan Witt Judge Comment: This was a crazy scandal that happened on campus, and was directly impacted by a new state bill. The bill could have very strong impacts on campus, aside from this one teacher's fate. An in-depth look at changes to tenure policies outside of this one incident is reccomended.
Competition Comment: Stories were given high marks not just for the length of stories, but also sourcing, variety of angles explored and how news items were expanded to discuss deeper social issues. Multi-media assets were also considered as expanding not only the information but its presentation.
