Recent Honors Alum Brenna Wins Online Journalism Award

Recent Newhouse School graduate Kate Brennan ’22 is the winner in the Individual Student Portfolio category of the 2022 Online Journalism Awards competition. She was honored her in-depth multimedia reporting project, “Aloha ʻāina,” Brennan completed the work as her Renée Crown Honors Program thesis project. Brennan was the managing editor of the 2021 edition of Tell Your Story Walking, a collection of creative work curated by honors students and guided by Honors instructor Jeffrey Pepper Rogers in his class of the same title. Peppers additionally teaches Inside the Words and Music for Honors.

Brennan spent two years developing the project, which tells the story of the ongoing debate between Native Hawaiians and the science community over a proposed large-scale telescope. In summer 2021, she traveled to Mauna Kea to interview individuals on both sides of the debate. During her senior year, she worked with communications design major Madeline Coyte and faculty members Shelvia Dancy and Jon Glass to create an engaging interactive digital story in conjunction with The NewsHouse.