Dubai Press Club, General Secretariat of the Arab Journalism Awards, today announced it has opened online submissions for the 12th edition inviting journalists to submit their work published in 2012 on www.arabjournalismaward.ae.
The deadline for uploading entries for any of the award’s 12 categories is 31 December, 2012.
Mona Bu Samra, Deputy Director of the Arab Journalism Awards, said: “The process of opening online nominations for the 12th edition came after intensive meetings held by the Board of Directors and members of the General Secretariat. The discussions resulted in the comprehensive development of a new category – Humanitarian Journalism -that reflects latest developments witnessed by the Arab media.
“Submissions for Humanitarian Journalism will include first-person investigations or reports that accurately depict details of critical humanitarian crises as they unfold on ground. Coverage on natural disasters, wars, epidemics, and human rights violations could also be submitted for entry into this category. Applicant to this award would have been eye witnesses. Their work would communicate the catastrophes in an honest and accurate narrative to the public.”
As the next step, the General Secretariat will set up jury panels for various categories of the award, comprising five to six judges for each category and 70 jury members in all.
The Arab Journalism Awards will give away will award US$50,000to the Media Personality of the Year, and US$20,000 for Best Columnist. Winners of the remaining categories will each receive US$15,000 as prize money.
In addition to the Humanitarian Journalism category introduced this year, other categories include politics, business, investigative journalism, IT, columnist, culture, sports, environment, photo-journalism, caricature, interview and children’s journalism. The Media Personality of the Year distinction will be based on recommendations offered by the AJA Board of Directors.
The 11th edition of the awards saw about 4,000 submissions from 19 Arab countries and 10 foreign countries competing for the 11 categories. For the first time, the awards accepted online submissions last year. The initiative proved extremely successful in speeding up the evaluation process and eliminating paperwork.
