About the award

Submissions are invited for the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund (KSMF) Awards 2021. The awards honor excellence in courageous reporting of conflict, corruption, human rights, transgressions and other pertinent issues. Since its founding in 2002, the KSMF has aimed to support those journalists Kurt most praised, the freelancers and local reporters whose work is often poorly remunerated, mostly unsung, and all too often faced with danger.

Today, the three annual awards are known as a sign of excellence worldwide and have a reputable track record for courageous reporting on conflict, corruption, and injustice. If you are one of those journalists, this is right for you.

Details

Submission deadline: May 31, 2022, Midnight BST

Awarding body: Kurt Schork Memorial Fund (KSMF) 

Country: UK

Award categories:

The 20th round of the awards is divided into 3 categories:

• A Local Reporter award that honors the often over-looked work of journalists in developing countries or those in transition who cover events in their homeland.
• A  Freelance award for those journalists who travel to the world’s war zones, usually at great personal risk, to witness and report the impact and consequences of events.
• A News Fixer award acknowledging local journalists and/or experts, hired by a visiting foreign reporter or news organization, whose guidance and local knowledge substantially impacted the content, impact and reach of the stories submitted.

Award value

Each award is for $5000 presented to the winners in a ceremony in London in September 2022.

Eligibility

The award is open to freelance journalists, local reporters, and news fixers from around the world.

How to apply?

Entrants can submit their applications for the award online.

Apply here.

Submission 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, 2020 and May 31, 2021.
• Accepted media outlets: 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 comprise war reporting, human rights issues, cross-border troubles, corruption or other controversial matters influencing people’s lives. Judges will be looking for professionalism, high journalistic standards, and evidence of commitment and courage in obtaining the story.
• The organizer suggests that each article be submitted as a text file – MS Word (.doc or .docx) or similar text format (.rtf), or a PDF of a text file.
• You may supply a URL link to your article(s), or a scan (as a PDF or JPG file) as supporting evidence of the publication context, but your entry will be ineligible if you do not also submit the required text files.
• The awards panel will take consider nominations for fixers who have received more than one recommendation from journalists they have worked with.

Required submission materials

• A CV about your education and journalism career or about the nominee.
• A passport-quality photo (JPEG, GIF or PNG file, size no larger than 250Kb) of yourself or that of the fixer who you nominate.
• A high Standard English translation if the original articles are not in English.
• A short statement indicating what you had to do to get the story.
• In the case of the fixer award, we require from the nominating journalist:
• A statement of nomination
• A copy of the story or stories produced because of the nominated fixer’s work.
• A statement that the nominee is aware that he/or she is being nominated and his/her consent is taken.
• An acceptance from the nominator and nominee that they accept the terms of the competition
• Two references

Similar opportunities: 

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Note: The maximum file size for text submissions or scans is 5Mb.

Should you have any questions about the 2022 awards process, please email to enquiries@ksmfund.org or visit the official link.