Madison High student named Idaho Student Journalist of the Year

REXBURG — Hunter Ericksen never set out to become Idaho’s Student Journalist of the Year.

In fact, when his adviser at Madison High School encouraged him to apply for the award, Ericksen wasn’t sure he was going to.

“I didn’t really want to at first because I hate applying for awards,” Ericksen said. “I didn’t feel like I needed the validation. I felt like our yearbook was a good indicator of that.”

But Ericksen decided to give it a shot.

The application process required him to create a portfolio showcasing different areas of journalism. He submitted examples of feature stories, sports stories, photography and other pieces that highlighted the work he had done as a leader.

“There’s like 12 sections, basically about every single part of journalism you could think of,” Ericksen said. “It took me like a week and a half to pull from all of my other experiences I’ve already done.”

But it was all worth the time because he was named the 2026 Idaho Student Journalist of the Year, and his portfolio advanced to the national competition.

The judging process for the state award was handled by members of the Washington Journalism Education Association, who reviewed the submissions.

A ‘promising’ award

Mike Dunn, director of the Idaho JEA, said seeing students create portfolios like Ericksen’s is a positive sign for the future of journalism.

“I think it’s very promising seeing individuals put together portfolios like Hunter’s,” Dunn said. “It shows his versatility and his dedication to his craft.”

Dunn has served as Idaho’s JEA director for four years. He said the organization works to support journalism, yearbook and student media programs across the state.

“Our goal is to promote and encourage journalism, yearbook, and student media programs throughout the state of Idaho by providing networking opportunities and academic resources for educators and contests for students,” Dunn said.

Dunn said one of his goals when becoming state director was to make sure Idaho students had a chance to be represented nationally.

“Idaho went without a representative for JEA Journalist of the Year for several years, and my main goal when I took over was to ensure we have a representative,” Dunn said. “We have submitted a winner the past two years.”

Winning the award was a surprising moment for someone who originally joined the yearbook class because he just needed the credit.

“It was kind of weird, honestly,” Ericksen said. “I was kind of just doing journalism because I thought it was fun. It was interesting that it kind of just slowly became more and more a part of my life, and I slowly started to get better and better at it.”

Life skills of a journalist

While Ericksen is not sure journalism will become his full-time career, He plans to serve a mission for his church beginning in October and said journalism has already given him skills he will carry with him there and once he returns.

“Everything you do in journalism carries over to something else, partly just because of the nature of journalism,” Ericksen said.

He said journalism taught him how to write, communicate, find stories and connect with people.

“It’s really hard at first to have a good interview with somebody, to know what questions to ask, to know how to get them to open up, and how to find the thing that you want to write about,” Ericksen said. “Interviewing more and more people teaches you how to actually talk to people, which, of course, you’re going to use for the rest of your life.”

Along with journalism skills, Ericksen learned how to lead others while serving as editor-in-chief of the yearbook. The transition from staff member to leader meant thinking beyond his own assignments and creating a vision for the entire team.

“I had to really create a vision of what I wanted our book to be like,” Ericksen said.

That included everything from major decisions about the theme of the yearbook to smaller details like fonts and design elements. But Ericksen said the biggest focus became the people behind the pages.

“The team aspect, in general, was always the thing that I kept coming back to because I wanted to build a team that was very functional and that could really achieve something that we couldn’t do separately,” Ericksen said.

He looked for advice from his dad, who manages teams through his work. Ericksen said he learned that building a successful group is about more than deadlines and assignments.

“Teams are teams no matter where you are,” Ericksen said. “I was able to take a lot of his advice.”

Through research, trial and error, and working with classmates, Ericksen said the yearbook staff created something meaningful.

“We were able to really create something special,” Ericksen said.

Supporting journalism

Dunn said students like Ericksen show why supporting young journalists matters.

“Journalism has and will continue to play such an important role in our society and in Idaho, and to see student journalists hone their skills in high school makes me excited to see what the next generation in this industry will achieve,” Dunn said.

For Ericksen, journalism has become more than writing stories or designing pages. It has become a way to understand people.

“The entire sense of journalism is to find things out about people and then share that with other people,” Ericksen said. “If that’s not just a human experience, I really don’t know what is.”