Journalists from all over the world are invited to apply for the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund (KSMF) in International Journalism 2017 awards.
Since its inception in 2002, KSMF has been supporting freelancers and local reporters who are often poorly paid for their works, mostly unsung and all too often fraught with danger.
The 16th annual awards are split into three categories: one is the local reporter award that recognises the often over-looked work of journalists in developing nations or countries in transition, who write about events in their homeland; another is a Freelance award for journalists who travel to the world’s conflict zones, usually at great personal risk, to witness and report the impact and consequences of events; and third is a news fixer award that rewards local journalists and/or experts, hired by visiting foreign reporters or news organisations, whose guidance and local knowledge materially benefited the content, impact and reach of the stories submitted.
According to the organizers, “each award is for $5,000 and will be presented at a prestigious ceremony in London in late October or November 2017.”
Submission criteria for the awards include the following:
- Three separate articles, including when journalists are nominating fixers for the new award.
- The submitted articles must have been published between June 1, 2016 and May 31, 2017.
- All print-based medium, such as newspapers and magazines, or established online publications are accepted but not blogs, personal websites or social media pages or channels.
- Articles can encompass war reporting, human rights issues, cross-border troubles, corruption or other controversial matters impacting on people’s lives.
- Because of problems with scanned entries and failed links in previous years, organisers require that each article be provided as a text file: either MS Word (.doc or .docx) or similar text formats (.rtf), or a PDF text file.
- 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 entries will be disqualified if applicants do not also submit the required text files.
Judges will be looking for professionalism, high journalistic standards, and evidence of dedication and courage in obtaining a story. Interested applicants are encouraged to complete the online entry form available at http://www.ksmfund.org/2017-awards.
The 2017 KSMF Awards is an annual award in international Journalism by the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund (KSMF).The 16th annual awards ceremony will be hosted at the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s main offices in Canary Wharf, London.
The deadline for submission of entries is midnight (GMT) on May 31, 2017.
