Five Whitman students win awards for excellence in journalism

Thursday, Mar 12, 2009

From left: Andy Jobanek ’10, Matthew Manley ’11, Gillian Frew ’11, William Murray ’92, J. Staten Hudson ’12, Sunn Kim ’11

Five Whitman students have won awards for excellence in journalism in the college’s annual Hosokawa Journalism Contest, part of an endowed program designed to support and honor the work of the staff of The Pioneer, Whitman’s student newspaper.

Professional journalists judging the contest included local Union-Bulletin staff, reporters Sheila Hagar, Terry McConn and Bret Rankin; local radio talk show host Andrew Holt; and journalists from such publications as the Seattle Times, Oregonian, New York Times, Washington Post and Associated Press.

College President George Bridges announced the winners and presented them with certificates and checks for $500 each, for their winning entries. All entries were published in the Pioneer during the previous year.

The winners are:

• Sunn Kim ’11, majoring in arts and sports medicine, originally from Sandy, Utah: Best photograph, for “Jason Shon soccer action,” published Oct. 23, 2008.
• Andy Jobanek ’10, English major, from Eugene, Ore.: Best opinion/editorial, “Rugby team’s calendar objectifies, doesn’t help,” published Dec. 22, 2008.
•  J. Staten Hudson ’12, undeclared major, from Leavenworth, Wash.: Best sports story, J. Staten Hudson, “Bridgeland brings winning, recruiting to Whitman,” published Nov. 13, 2008.
• Gillian Frew ’11, English major, from Vancouver, Wash.: Best news story, Gillian Frew, “Security measures enforced: Prentiss thefts latest in string of crimes,” published Nov. 20, 2008.
• Matthew Manley ’11, undeclared major, from Salem, Ore.: Best feature, Matthew Manley, “Whitehouse-Crawford: fine dining with the folks,” published Oct. 16, 2008.

The Hosokawa endowment also includes a lecture and workshop component. It honors Robert R. Hosokawa, a 1940 Whitman graduate who enjoyed a long career in journalism, corporate communications and education. After graduating from Whitman with honors in English, Hosokawa was considering law school when he and other Japanese-Americans were forced into internment camps at the start of World War II. He and his wife were allowed to leave their internment camp in Idaho after one of his former Whitman professors found him a job with a weekly newspaper in Independence, Missouri.   Hosokawa is now retired and living in Florida. His son, David Hosokawa, established the endowment.

This year’s lecturer was freelance journalist William Murray, a 1992 Whitman graduate who spent three months in 2008 imbedded with U.S. and Iraqi forces. Murray conducted a workshop for student journalists on the craft and career or journalism prior to the awards dinner. His public lecture was titled “The Problem with Today’s Media (Or Why News Coverage of Iraq was so Poor) and What We Can Do About It.”

Murray was born and raised in Alaska. After graduating from Whitman, he was an oil field worker, forest fire fighter and public radio news director before receiving a graduate degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism in 1999. He then worked for “Bloomberg News” in Washington, D.C., where he covered, among other topics, Congress, NASA, and the Florida recount of votes for the president. In 2004 he moved to London, where he covered energy markets, OPEC and alternative fuels for “Bloomberg.”