Winners Announced for Robert H. and Susan M. Rewoldt Essay Contest in Politics
Hillsdale College politics faculty award top three essays
HILLSDALE, Mich. — Hillsdale College announces the winners of the third annual Robert H. and Susan M. Rewoldt Essay Contest in Politics. Students Jonah Apel, Elizabeth Crawford, and Maggie Hroncich took first, second, and third place, respectively. Their essays were written on the topic: “What is the right relationship between the news media and free political institutions?”
“The quality of our students’ writing is spectacular,” said Provost Christopher VanOrman. “All of the essays offered a unique approach to the topic and demonstrate the hard work our students put into anything they undertake.”
Apel’s essay, “The Dangerous Power of ‘Objective Journalism,’” won first prize and argued that the press has accrued to itself undue political influence by presenting itself as neutral, objective authority. “The news media should exemplify a sphere of public debate, not a disguise of objectivity. America needs to tear down the notion that legacy media are objective beacons of democracy and return to the understanding that even good journalists often portray events through the lenses of their worldviews,” said Apel.
Crawford won second prize with an essay titled “Solzhenitsyn, the Press, and the Value of Free Speech.” She considered contemporary views on the news media alongside Solzhenitsyn’s 1978 Harvard Commencement Speech, “A World Split Apart.” Hroncich won third prize and wrote “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: But Political Institutions and the Media Need To.” She argued that the appropriate relationship between the news media and political institutions is one of independence so that each serves as a check on the other.
First place received $5,000, second $3,000, and third $1,000. The contest was open to all Hillsdale College undergraduate students. Essays were judged by the politics faculty.
In 2019, Mrs. Susan M. Rewoldt established an endowment to fund an annual essay contest on political topics, made possible through a generous bequest to Hillsdale College from her late husband, Robert H. Rewoldt. Mr. Rewoldt’s bequest has also funded the Robert H. and Susan M. Rewoldt Scholarship for the George Washington Fellowship Program and the Robert H. and Susan M. Rewoldt Endowed Merit Scholarship in Politics, for students with a major in politics.
View headshots of the winners of this year’s essay contest here.
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