AI dining hall story wins spring 2025 Reporting I Beat Pitch Competition

Two students and their instructor pose for a picture.
Students in Reporting I competed in an end-of-semester Beat Story Pitch Competition on April 18, where each group was judged on a reporting pitch. Students Tripp Teague (l.), Marissa Rabin (r.) and Janki Patel (not pictured), won the pitch with a story about how UGA dining halls incorporate AI to combat food waste. They were taught by Brown James (center). (Photo/Lauren A. Pike)

AI dining hall story wins spring 2025 Reporting I Beat Pitch Competition

May 14, 2025

A story idea about new technology and AI helping combat food waste at University of Georgia dining halls, presented by Janki Patel, Marissa Rabin and Tripp Teague, won first place in the Reporting I Beat Story Pitch Competition for spring 2025.

Nine beat groups, roughly 180 students, across the Reporting I (JOUR 3090) sections presented nearly 40 pitches throughout the day. The winners of each class section moved on to the final round, hosted on April 18, in Studio 100. 

A panel of three judges and alumni — Caitlyn Stroh-Page, Liz Rymarev and Allison Mawn — representing The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and The Red & Black selected the sustainability beat in Brown James’s class as the winner. 

View photos from the competition on the Grady College’s Flickr page.

The Reporting I beats are local music, business/consumer news, city-county government, diversity and sustainability. The finale represented all of the beats.

Photos by Lauren A. Pike and Ty Johnston

Here’s the winning budget line:

Food waste is a global issue that has yet to be solved. In this local enterprise story, we look at this problem locally, specifically how food waste and management are handled in UGA dining halls. With the recent rise of new technology and AI, UGA is implementing these advancements to combat unnecessary excess food. This story also covers how the public responds to UGA’s modernized technological solutions.

“Our students did an excellent job this year focusing on what’s new and why it matters to a local audience in brainstorming, reporting and presenting their pitches,” said Professor Lori Johnston, a journalism lecturer and lead instructor for Reporting I. “The competition element in our small classes and then at the finale aims to simulate what students will face as they pitch stories in their internships, jobs and freelance work.”

While initially surprised with their win, the sustainability group credited James, a doctoral student who has taught Reporting I for two years, for his help during the process.

“His way of teaching is very low-key,” Rabin said. “Maybe I’m speaking for myself, but I feel like he made everything seem like not a big deal, and that kind of helped get everything done without stressing out.”

Teague and Rabin viewed the pitch presentation as beneficial and practice for future endeavors.

“For me personally, with the whole presentation aspect, when you’re presenting it to your group and you’re acting like it is a real journalism pitch, I think that’ll be very helpful in the future, because even if you’re not a journalism major, you’re still going to be making presentations,” Teague said. “That’s going to be something that you have to do, have those public speaking skills and abilities. So the fact that you’re practicing that and putting those on display is very nice, because I feel like I haven’t done that a lot so far at Georgia.”

Patel advises future Reporting I students to take things step-by-step when preparing for the beat story pitch process and presentation.

“It seems really overwhelming at first when you look at everything you have to do,” she said. “Once you get through those first few steps, everything starts coming together really quickly, and then you realize it’s not as overwhelming as you thought it would be.” 

The judges throughout the day included faculty, doctoral students, professionals and students.

Stroh-Page, who has been a judge in past competitions, praised all of the finalists for their strong pitches, which ranged from a profile on Love.Craft Band to a trend story about Athens Twilight Criterium to a behind-the-scenes preview of the UGA Symphony Orchestra and Combined Choirs concert with more 300 musicians and singers.

The runners-up were Courtney Craft, Quinn FitzHenry, Haley Meredith, Emma Martin and Sophie Smith from Andrea Hudson’s class section and Stacy Apostolopoulos, Clarice Henry, Carter Nichols and Fiona Sturgeon from doctoral student Brittany Shivers’s class.

The students won UGA-themed prize packs.

The beat story pitch competition is held at the end of each semester. The next competition is scheduled for November 2025. 

BY THE NUMBERS

  • 21 judges

  • 38 pitches

  • More than 50 JLab visits

  • More than 150 interviews

  • More than 190 photos

  • More than 190 video clips

  • More than 400 social media posts

Authors: Karmen Morrison, Sam Tupper