News/Media Literacy Award to honor front-line teachers and news media organizations in the quest to help students understand the "why" of press freedom
“Too often and in too many countries news/media literacy instruction skips the part about the need for journalism and the high price some pay to do that job,” said Dr. Aralynn Abare McMane, the director of Global Youth & News Media. “This year, we want to work toward correcting some of that by recognizing those on the front lines who make sure those lessons are taught well.”
That's why educators and news organizations will be honored by a special Press Freedom Teaching Award in the 2023 edition of the Global Youth & News Media Prize.
The award will recognize excellence in making sure that students develop a thorough understanding of the crucial role of journalism in society and of the sometimes deadly risks for people who do this work. This award will serve as the news/literacy category for this year’s prize.
CANDIDATES
Entries from educators and news media organizations (outlets and NGOs) will be assessed by a distinguished, international panel of judges that will include both experts in the topic and past laureates.
Educators can teach primary or secondary students in any kind of setting. News media organizations include companies and nonprofits involving journalists in this work. You can nominate yourself, or someone else can nominate you.
"Teaching" means any kind of course or program at the primary or secondary level. Educators and news media teams can nominate themselves or be nominated by someone else. Candidates can be anywhere in the world. News outlets on any platform as well as the nonprofits that represent or support them are eligible for the award.
“We plan to make this as easy as possible for candidates, given that all of them have had to do more in the same amount of time and likely with fewer resources for years now,” McMane said. “The entry process will be both flexible and streamlined, and produce a result that should be useful in other ways."
Laureates will take part in an international ceremony and webinar designed to spread the word about their outstanding contributions to journalism and education and to encourage emulation of them.
SOME BACKGROUND
In 2021, Global Youth & News Media Prize created a Press Freedom Teacher award in its News/Media Literacy category to recognize the front-line teachers who were making sure students learned that quality journallism is a good thing to have around and that some people faced grave dangers just to do that job.
The first awards went to three teachers in 2021 and were given in memory of Scott Schurz (1936-2021) , a local and global champion of both press freedom and youth engagement. The laureates were: Janis Schacter (USA), Marisabelle Bellido Terán (Bolivia) and Olawale (Ibrahim) Gbenusola (Nigeria). Details about what they did are HERE.
For 2023, we expanded the award to include news media organizations and renamed it the Press Freedom Teaching Award.
MORE ABOUT US
Global Youth & News Media is a French and USA nonprofit committed to engaging young people and news media in ways that reinforce youth citizenship and journalism in society.
In addition to a global awards program, we amplifiy youth journalism through our World Teenage Reporting Project and support journalism for children, most recently through the #HowToSaveOurPlanetStep1 global project. We have also begun to curate collections of resources from around the world, starting with activities to help understand the threats to journalists and what real journalism at its best is supposed to be.
This is the fourth edition of the Global Youth & News Media Prize. It began with an honorary inaugural award to The Guardian US and The Eagle Eye student journalists of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School for their joint coverage of the 2018 March for Our Lives demonstration against gun violence in Washington, DC.
Since then the Prize has also honored:
JOURNALISM
√ supporting youth in general,
√ giving youth crucial information and hope about the fate of the planet
√ helping children cope with the COVID-19 pandemic
NEWS/MEDIA LITERACY
√ teaching teenagers the realities of doing real journalism
√ informing about disinformation through compelling gamification
√ giving compelling insights about how investigative journalism works
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Contact us at info@youthandnewsmedia.net or use the form below.