“There’s no need to deny that being shortlisted is a good feeling, an honour — especially because the award is in memory of a man who died doing the kind of stories I don’t shy away from pursuing,”
This is Fisayo Soyombo’s remark when his name was shortlisted in the Local Reporters category of Kurt Schork Memorial Fund — which recognises the often unacknowledged work of local reporters in developing nations or countries in transition who write about events in their homeland — for Blood on the Plateau, a five-part series on the killings in Plateau State, published in December 2013.
Soyombo, The Cable news and features editor said further that there’s no need to get ahead of himself. “This is only a shortlist, and I am certain that each of the eight finalists is a deserving, probable winner.”
Among the seven other shortlisted applicants are Neha Dixit (India), Priyanka Dubey (India), Reji Joseph (India), Shaila Rosagel (Mexico), and Alizeh Kohari (Pakistan). Two other Nigerians — Olatunji Ololade and Itunu Ajayi — make up the list, which contained no Nigerian in 2013.
A second category — which rewards “freelance journalists who travel to the world’s news hotspots, often at great personal risk and little protection, to witness and report the impact and consequences of major events” — features Matthieu Aikins (Canada), David Francis (USA), James Harkin (Republic of Ireland/UK), Tristan McConnell (UK), Alexis Okeowo (USA), Elena Stancu (Romania), Graeme Wood (Canada/USA) and Meng Yang (China).
The winner in each category will be announced in September, while the awards ceremony will hold at the Thomson Reuters Auditorium, Canary Wharf, London, in the evening of Thursday, October 30, 2014. This shortlisted entries for this year’s awards, the 13th in the annual series, was judged by Lindsey Hilsum, international editor, Channel 4 News, UK; Paola Totaro, president of the Foreign Press Association, London, UK; Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief foreign correspondent and Sean Maguire, head of communications and spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), UK and former global editor, politics and international affairs at Reuters Established in 2002, the $US5,000 awards honour American freelance journalist Kurt Schork, who was killed in 2000 while on assignment for Reuters in Sierra Leone.
The awards recognise the work of reporters who seek to illuminate the human condition through courageous reporting of conflict, corruption, human rights transgressions and other key issues,” the organisers wrote in a statement.
In 2013, Rania AbouzeidRania Abouzeid — a Lebanese-Australian based in Beirut, Lebanon — won the Freelance category award for her stories published by Time magazine and the New Yorker covering the Syrian conflict; while China’s Fiona Xiao-Mi Tan won the Local Reporter category “for her revelatory exposure… of an appalling scale of health and safety abuse of workers in China’s booming manufacturing sector” published by the South China Morning Post
