News Story

Media School students Megan Tackett and Alaina Milazzo were among 12 students from around the nation participating in the Washington Media Scholars Foundation Media Case Competition in early June.

The first-place team received $5,000 in scholarship money for each partner and second place received $3,000 per partner. Other finalists, such as Tackett and Milzzo, did not receive scholarships but were included in the the expense-paid trip to Washington, where they toured media outlets such as Politico, The Washington Post, Fox News and NBC. They also networked with top executives in the public affairs and media industries.

To win the trip to Media Scholars Week, participants submitted their work for a qualifying round last winter. From those, the organization selected 30 teams to submit work for the case competition, which involved creating strategic media plans based on a hypothetical public policy issue using data from national research and rating firms. From those entrants, judges invited six teams to Washington, D.C., for the weeklong program.

In Washington, finalists presented their cases to a panel of five judges from the industry, who selected the top two winners.

Tackett and Milazzo are studying public relations and advertising and also are members of the Liberal Arts Management Program.

A third IU student, Kelley School of Business’ Bogdan Kaminyar, also was a finalist and spent the week in Washington