Journalism Award to honor excellence in pandemic news for children
Producers of news for children who have excelled in explaining important pandemic issues will be honored by this year’s Global Youth & News Media Prize.
The Journalism Award of the Prize this year will recognize innovation in coverage on any platform about the COVID-19 pandemic for children. The award will recognize breakthrough reporting with, about and/or for this young audience that produces a clear, important impact, especially through a solutions journalism approach and will be judged by an international jury of experts in science, journalism and childhood education.
“News for children often exists in the shadow of its counterparts for adults, even though it often does a better job at helping its audience both know what’s going on and what it means,” said Dr. Aralynn McMane, the Global Youth & News Media director. “This year, we want to try to correct some of that lack of recognition.”
Registration for the award opens 1 March with a deadline for entries of 15 April. Laureates will take part in an international ceremony and webinar designed to spread the word about their outstanding contributions to journalism and education and encourage emulation of them.
Further details and registration information can be found here.
The jury includes Xue Bai (China) the originator of From My Window: Children at Home During COVID-19, a free, downloadable book for children from the United Nations that looks at the lives of housebound children during the pandemic; Dr. Kristi Westphaln, a pediatric nurse practitioner at Rady Children's Hospital California) who has been producing Health’s Up podcasts for young people during a post-doc fellowship; French psychologist Dr. Valérie A.G. Ventureyra, who wrote guidelines for her cohorts about helping patients and themselves cope with the pandemic; Alexandra Iselin Waldhorn, former head of the Pressline child reporter news agency (USA) and now with UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning, Helen Bouygues, whose Reboot Foundation aims to improve children’s critical thinking skills, and Santhosh Kumar of India whose Gamification Republic aims to make learning more fun.
Global Youth & News Media is a French nonprofit committed to linking young people and news media in ways that reinforce youth citizenship and journalism in society. In addition to its global awards program, the organization amplifies youth journalism through its World Teenage Reporting Projects.
This is the third edition of the Global Youth & News Media Prize, which began with an honorary inaugural award to The Guardian US and the student journalists of Marjory Stoneman Douglas for their joint coverage of the 2018 March for Our LIves demonstration against gun violence in Washington, DC., presented at News Xchange in Edinburgh, Scotland.
For 2021, The News/Media Literacy Award category focuses on teachers and also has a 15 April deadline. Details will come later this year for The Planet Award, which honors news media reporting or initiatives that effectively provide teenagers and the youngest adults up to age 24 with information and hope for saving the planet.
Founding supporters include the News Decoder (France, the main media partner), the European Journalism Centre (The Netherlands) and the Google News Initiative (USA, UK). Support for the first Planet Award came from the Eurasian Media Forum (Kazakhstan).
For more information: info@youthandnewsmedia.net