Each year when the finalists gather for the Hearst Journalism Awards, we are all impressed not only by the smarts, hustle and skills of the participants … we are struck by the number of talented young people who want to make a career in journalism.

In this era of internet communication, blogging and 140-character news feeds, one might think the craft of journalism would be in decline. After all, one theory holds that anybody can do it and that all points of view are equal.

Some people think the upheaval in journalism is created by new technology that demands paper be replaced by electrons and images be displayed on cell phones. But I don’t think that is the real revolution. The important new thing is the amazing explosion of new voices and new people who can contribute to our understanding of the world and tell us, and show us, what really happened.

So, the trend is not young people leaving journalism, but more people, some of the stars of their generation, wanting to participate — looking to improve their skills and a chance to measure themselves against the best of their peers.

In our view, journalism is not about paper, or pixels, wave propagation or bandwidth — it’s about human beings who need information to make life decisions, and to find inspiration, and it’s about a tiny group of other people who gather that information and transform it into stories, images and pages.

Here at the Foundation, we are trying to make the competition as good as the contestants. We strive to recruit the best judges and attract prominent interview subjects, and we have incorporated four multimedia programs into our monthly competitions, in the effort to keep abreast of the changes in the media world.

This past year’s competition was the 61st year of the program. The program received 1,325 entries from 95 accredited undergraduate journalism schools from around the country. Of those, 585 were in writing, 211 were in photojournalism, 231 were in audio and television and a record 298 were in the multimedia competitions. The top 29 winners from those competitions qualified for the Championships this year.

You can be proud to be a participant in this venerable competition. More importantly, your fellow citizens, public officials, corporate leaders and the members of our Foundation Board are proud of you — the next generation. All free people depend on your judgment and hard work to find out what happened in the corridors of power and in faraway places — and why.