ICIJ accepting entries for Daniel Pearl Awards

The awards are granted by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), a project of the Centre for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C. Formerly the ICIJ Awards, the prizes were renamed in 2008 in honour of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was slain by militants in Pakistan in 2002.

Eligibility criteria

Held biennially, the competition is open to any professional journalist or team of journalists of any nationality working in any medium. To be eligible, the investigation - either a single work or a single-subject series - must involve reporting in at least two countries on a topic of global significance. A jury of international journalists will select the winners.

Two US$5000 first-place prizes will be awarded, one to a US-based reporter or news outlet, and another to a non-US-based journalist or news outlet. Five additional finalists will each receive US$1000 prizes.

"The Daniel Pearl Awards provide us a special opportunity to recognise exceptional cross-border investigative reporting," said acting ICIJ director Bill Kovach. "It is an opportunity to call to wider public attention the dedication and courage of journalists around the world who seek to monitor the people and institutions of power and uncover inconvenient truth about current events."

Unique

The awards are reputedly unique among journalism prizes in that they specifically honour cross-border investigative reporting. Past winners have included a collaborative series by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corp,The Guardian, BBC Newsnight, and de Volkskrant about toxic waste dumping in Africa and a surprising exposé by freelancer Aram Roston, with The Nation, on payoffs by US military contractors to the Taliban. The last Pearl Awards attracted 86 entries from 24 countries, involving reporting in more than 60 countries.

The winners will be announced in October at this year's Global Investigative Journalism Conference in Kiev, Ukraine. There is no entry fee. For application information and awards criteria, go to ICIJ's Daniel Pearl Awards website.