Journalism students compete for the 2025 Mark Finley news writing award
Undergraduate journalism students compete in the 2025 Mark Finley Gold Pen Award for Best Beginning News Writer contest on May 1.
Undergraduate students Ruby Wray (First Place), Griffin Salkowski (Second Place) and Spencer Kyte (Third Place) were named the winners of the University of Arizona School of Journalism’s annual Mark Finley Gold Pen Award for Best Beginning News Writer contest held on May 1.
The seven journalism students who competed were nominated by their JOUR 205: Reporting the News instructor as promising news writers. All of the participants will be gifted personalized engraved gold pens and the top three writers will receive scholarship awards for their work.
Paul Ingram (left) of the Tucson Sentinel and Prerana Sannappanavar (right) of the Arizona Daily Star served as the contest's judges. Assistant Professor of Practice Kendal Blust (center) organized this year's contest.
Participants were given one hour to write a news story using information provided in a press release and interview transcripts centered around a fictional local arson investigation.
Prerana Sannappanavar, a higher education reporter at the Arizona Daily Star, and Paul Ingram, a senior reporter at Tucson Sentinel, served as this year’s judges.
The news writing contest is named after the late Mark Finley, a 1934 university alum who was a journalist and assistant to the publisher of Hearst's Boston newspaper for 17 years.
The three winning students will be honored at the School of Journalism’s annual Just Desserts awards ceremony on May 8.