European Young Journalist Award 2010

Sadly today I've not been able to attend the second part of the MELD workshop that I participated in late last year in Preston. They are getting together at the BFI to do some more work determining the digital skills that journalists will need in the medium term future.

In the short term though, young journalists of the present can raise their profile by entering the European Commission's European Young Journalist Award 2010.

The closing date is February 28th, and entrants have to be between 17 and 35. Submissions should be reports that focus on the issue of EU enlargement. Obviously material published and broadcast on traditional media counts, but the rules also state that:

"Blogs and other emerging forms of online communication are acknowledged as part of the online media landscape and online journalism to the extent that the content is produced in a journalistic style and published at consistent intervals (daily, weekly etc.)."

Considering I've just been wrestling with the principles of my blogging and whether currybetdotnet constitutes 'news', I found that an interesting definition. In my thinking I hadn't considered regularity to be a factor, but that seems to make sense. It is important to note in the competition rules though that:

"Content from blogs which have been specifically created for the purpose of the present competition, are not eligible."

As an apparent nation of Eurosceptics, I notice that none of the partner organisations or media partners for the award appear to be British. Each of the participating countries presents a prize, and the UK jury for the award is David Bradshaw (Head of Media Department, Canterbury Christ Church), Nathaniel Copsey (Senior Lecturer in Politics, Aston Centre for Europe) and Jackie Harrison (Head of Journalism Department, Sheffield University).