Kurt Schork Memorial Funds announces International Journalism Award Programme

Deadline: 31 May 2019

The Kurt Schork Memorial Fund (KSMF) has announced its International Journalism 2019 awards Programme.

Since its inception in 2002, the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund has sought to support those journalists Kurt most admired, the freelancers and local reporters whose work is often poorly paid, mostly unsung and all too often fraught with danger.

The three annual awards, for freelance and local journalism and, since 2017, for newsfixers, are recognized worldwide as a mark of excellence and have an established track record for brave reporting on conflict, corruption and injustice.

Categories

The 18th annual call for awards is therefore now split into three categories:

A Local Reporter award: That recognizes the often over-looked work of journalists in developing nations or countries in transition who write about events in their homeland.
A Freelance award: This award for those journalists who travel to the world’s conflict zones, usually at great personal risk, to witness and report the impact and consequences of events.
A News Fixer award: This award rewarding local journalists and/or experts, hired by a visiting foreign reporter or news organization, whose guidance and local knowledge materially benefited the content, impact and reach of the stories submitted.

Award Information

Each award is for $5,000 and will be presented at a prestigious ceremony in London in late October or November 2019. Since 2009, the awards ceremony has been hosted at the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s main offices in Canary Wharf, London.

Criteria

Three separate articles must be submitted, including when journalists are nominating fixers for the new award.
The submitted articles must have been published between June 1, 2018 and May 31, 2019.
Accepted media: any print-based medium, such as newspapers and magazines, or established online publications. Blogs, personal websites and social media pages or channels are not accepted.
Articles can encompass war reporting, human rights issues, cross-border troubles, corruption or other controversial matters impacting on people’s lives. Judges will be looking for professionalism, high journalistic standards, and evidence of dedication and courage in obtaining the story.
Applicants may supply a URL link to their article(s), or a scan (as a PDF or JPG file) as supporting evidence of the publication context, but their entry will be disqualified if applicant do not submit the required text files.
The awards panel will take into account nominations for fixers who have received more than one recommendation from journalists they have worked with.
Additional material applicants must provide:
- A CV or resumé about their education and journalism career or about that of the fixer applicants are nominating.
- A passport-quality photo of them self or that of the fixer applicant are nominating.
- A high standard English translation if the original articles are not in English.
- A short statement explaining what applicant had to do to get the story.
In the case of the fixer award, they require from the nominating journalist:
- A statement of nomination.
- A copy of the story or stories generated because of the nominated fixer’s involvement.
- A statement that the nominee is aware that applicants is being nominated and has given permission for the nomination. The awards panel will take into account nominations for fixers who have received more than one recommendation from journalists they have worked with.
- An acceptance from the nominator and nominee that they accept the terms of the competition.
- Two references.