2025 Student Journalism Finalists
Hannah Epstein & Rana Rastegari
The Bi-College News
Private Investigators, Confidential Meetings, and a “Betrayal of Trust”: Inside Bryn Mawr’s Probe Into Pro-Palestinian Protests
- Private Investigators, confidential meetings, and a “betrayal of trust”: Inside Bryn Mawr’s probe into Pro-Palestinian protests
- A Response to President Cadge
Comments From the Judges:
“This is really, really good, given the topic and the university’s reticence to participate. The bigger issue for them is that as a private school, they have fewer tools for reporting (no FOIA, ETC) and more risks to the reporters. Well-told and alarming story exposing questionable surveillance practices by administrators targeting their own students. It took guts to tell the story despite the obvious potential for retaliation by administrators, and the editors stood up forcefully to attempts to discredit them.”
“This piece, to me, is an example of where student journalism can outshine larger newsrooms. The student reporter clearly had deep contacts on campus that enabled them to tell this story more richly than an outsider. I liked the way this reporter focused on a specific campus situation as a way of offering insight into the much larger national conversation regarding student protest and Palestine/Israel conflict. This is smart, in-depth, and well sourced, researched and handled reporting.”
Nicholas Gutteridge
The Battalion
Inside Texas A&M’s Increasingly Polarized Campus
- ‘They rarely have all the facts’: Behind the scenes, conservative influence on Aggieland soars
- A&M’s president denied request for LGBTQ+ course to fulfill core curriculum requirement
- ‘There’s only one John Sharp’: After 14 years, the Texas A&M System’s longest-serving chancellor nears retirement
Comments From the Judges:
“I’m impressed with the level of reporting on this piece — this reporter took on an ambitious topic that often is represented vaguely or broadly in reporting and did a lot of legwork to get specific, hard to get information. Their reporting and conclusions are impressive. Good granular reporting by patching together the elements of the story from meetings and documents.”
“This is a super-topical piece that took courage to report given the campus climate, which is generally inhospitable to inquisitive journalism and particularly to journalism questioning the state power structure. The journalists aggressively used FOI requests to get past the wall of administrative silence. Their reporting shed light on a huge powerful institution not well-covered by mainstream professional media in a way that exposed tensions roiling TAMU behind the scenes, and tapping into larger societal trends about conservative political and alumni pressure on curricular decisions.”
Herald Staff
The Brown Daily Herald
Two Killed, Nine Injured in Dec. 13 Mass Shooting at Brown University
- ‘Unimaginably tragic’: Tracing the 50 hours after the shooting at Brown
- One night under lockdown on College Hill
- How the Providence community came together in the wake of the mass shooting at Brown
Comments From the Judges:
“Impressive job of scrambling to inform the campus community in a crisis situation, including capturing the human-interest side of what it’s like to be trapped in a shelter-in-place with little access to information. The staff brought a ton of personnel to bear on near round-the-clock updates as information trickled out. The retrospective piece (‘How the Providence community came together in the wake of the mass shooting at Brown’) is especially nicely illustrated and presented.”
“This piece was an excellent example of clear, breaking news journalism done well and told with heart and detail. The format in which it was presented also offered something distinct and clear to the reader. I appreciated the multiple perspectives, not just focusing on students but on staff and the wider community. It offered what we so often lack in news pieces which is deeply feeling stories. I was moved by these stories and thought it brought to life a harrowing campus event without overly glorifying the shooter.”
