Chuck Scatterday, Anjelica Trinone, Ashton Marra and David Smith pose with awards during the 2025 BEA Festival of Media Arts.
Eleven students from the West Virginia University Reed School of Media and Communications won awards at the Broadcast Education Association’s (BEA) 2025 Festival of the Arts for their work on five media productions.
The awards are open to full-time students who are either BEA student members or students at a BEA Institutional Member college or university. This year, BEA received 2,285 entries and awarded 445 student winners from 111 colleges and universities.
The winning productions from the Reed School are:
2nd Place in Student Newscast – “WVU News” Show 3 by Sydney Wentz and Haley Kish
3rd Place in Television Hard News: “Sex Bots” by Claudia Di Lima
Award of Excellence in Promotional: “Jools Gilson: The Knitting Map” by Liana Brooks
Award of Excellence in Promotional: “Farm to You” by Mason Kinsey, Kendall Drobish, Erin Cho and Sam Nichols
Award of Excellence in Video Sports News Program: “Mountaineer Playbook” Show 5 Fall 2024 by Aneissa Gallo, Harley Cochran and Sean Petraitis
“It's really surreal,” Di Lima said. “It feels nice to know I was recognized for a story like this one, especially considering the work I put into it. I'm very grateful for the support of my professors and peers that helped me grow academically over the past year to create this story.”
Di Lima’s piece, titled “Sex Bots,” was part of the Spring 2024 “WVU News” Special Edition Newscast and focused on AI bots that steal images of women for use in explicit content. The additional “WVU News” win was for Show 3 from the same semester, which featured stories on the Campus Self-Defense Act, the war in Ukraine and eating disorders.
WVU’s two awards of excellence in the Promotional category included Farm to You, which highlights a WVU Health Sciences program that provides locally grown fruits and vegetables to residents in need, and a feature on visiting artist Jools Gilson, co-creator of the Knitting Map, which was on display in the Art Museum of WVU during the fall 2024 semester.
“This was my first major project for the College of Creative Arts and Media (CCAM), and I am just so proud of all the support and help I had with this project,” said Brooks, a dual major in Multidisciplinary Media Studies and Dance who is also a CCAM Marketing and Communications student worker. “Earning this award reminded me that you should always put yourself out there because you never know what might happen.”
“Mountaineer Playbook,” the School’s sports broadcast news program, received its first-ever BEA recognition for the Fall 2024 Show 5 episode, which featured stories on the search for WVU’s new football coach, a settlement on student-athlete compensation and a WVU student commentating with ESPN+.
"I’m incredibly proud of our students for receiving multiple awards from BEA again this year,” said Diana Martinelli, director of the Reed School and vice dean of the WVU College of Creative Arts and Media. “This national recognition is a testament to our students’ willingness to experiment and produce meaningful work, and we’re fortunate to have dedicated, passionate faculty who mentor, teach and encourage them.”
The “WVU News” and “Mountaineer Playbook” courses operate like actual newsrooms with students working as reporters, writers, camera operators, editors, anchors, producers, directors and technical crew. The programs are shared across the region through a variety of media. “WVU News” has received numerous awards, including several from BEA and an Emmy.
The Farm to You and Jools Gilson videos were both created as part of a video editing course where students worked on projects for external clients. Farm to You was produced in collaboration with students in Martin Hall Agency, the Reed School’s student-run, faculty-led strategic communications firm. The Gilson video was produced for the Art Museum of WVU in partnership with the College of Creative Arts and Media Marketing and Communications team.
For more information about the Reed School of Media and Communications, visit mediaandcommunications.wvu.edu.