The Kurt Schork Memorial Fund (KSMF) is now accepting submissions for its 2023 Awards in International Journalism.

Now in their 22nd year, the Awards honour American freelance journalist Kurt Schork – who was killed in 2000 while on assignment for Reuters in Sierra Leone – and recognise excellence in courageous reporting of conflict, corruption, injustice and human rights transgressions.

The Local Reporter Award recognises the often-overlooked work of journalists in developing nations, or countries in transition, who write about events in their homeland.

The Local Reporter Award winner will receive a cash prize of $5,000. The deadline for entries is midnight (GMT) on Tuesday, May 31 2023. Judges will look for journalistic excellence in applicants’ submissions and evidence of determination and courage in obtaining their stories.

2023 submission criteria

• Entrants to the Local Reporter Award must submit three articles each.
• The submitted articles must have been published between June 1, 2022 and May 31, 2023.
• 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.
• Because of problems with scanned entries and failed links in previous years, we require that each article be provided 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 disqualified if you do not also submit the required text files.

Additional material you must provide:

• A CV or resumé about your education and journalism career.
• A passport-quality photo (JPEG, GIF or PNG file, size no larger than 250Kb) of yourself.
• A high standard English translation if the original articles are not in English.
• A short statement explaining what you had to do to get the story.

Kindly note the maximum file size for text submissions or scans is 5Mb. Entrants must complete the online entry form (or a PDF for printing and posting if not possible).

FAQs and enquiries:

Please see here for our FAQs. If you have any further questions about the Awards process, please email enquiries@ksmfund.org.