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BEA STUDENT NEWS AWARDSDana Rosengard, University of Memphisdanar@memphis.eduBEA CONTESTSYear two of the Broadcast Education Association News Division’s student newsawards brought another round of excitement and anticipation to the nationalconvention in Las Vegas. The Division competition also fed directly into the BEAFestival awards, naming two individual students from among all the news winners totake part in a grand presentation of impressive broadcast work by students and facultyfrom across the country.“The Student News Division was one of the two largest competitions within theBEA Festival of Media Arts. At the convention, I heard nothing but praise for yourawards session. Working as a part of the BEA Festival you are establishing someimportant precedents for the future,” Festival Chairman Don Godfrey, a professor inthe Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication at Arizona StateUniversity, said.Categories of competition were increased for the 2002 student competition withawards now given for newscast, hard news reporting, feature news reporting and sportsreporting. Also new this year, a judging evaluation sheet with ranking requests in sevenareas: news value, creativity, technical quality/video, technical quality/audio, delivery,writing and overall quality.Radio judges listened to 32 entries: four newscasts, five sports reports, 11 hard newsstories and 12 feature news stories. Judging captain for the newscast category wasCandace Holmstrom at the Canadian Broadcasting Company. Leading the judgingefforts in the sports was Bob Priddy of Learfield Communications in Missouri.Judging captain for the hard news competition was Lisa Wolf at WTOP-Radio inWashington, D.C. Leading the judging duties for the feature reports was Steve Butlerat KYW-Radio in Philadelphia.With first, second and third place awards in each of the four categories, 12 awardswinners were named during convention festivities at BEA 2003: The Next Generation,the 48th Convention and Exhibition, held at the Las Vegas Convention Center.Broadcast students from Arizona State University and the University of Montanacaptured eight of the awards with single winners representing Trinity University,Northwestern University, the University of Alabama and the University of NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill.BEA—Educating tomorrow’s electronic media professionals 55