GlobalPost announces second annual GroundTruth fellowship for Middle East reporting

NEW YORK — GlobalPost is proud to announce the second annual 'GroundTruth fellowship for reporting in the Middle East' and we are now accepting applications for proposals for the $10,000 grant.

The fellowship was officially announced last month at the Overseas Press Club Foundation luncheon and we are setting a deadline of April 15 for all proposals. We plan to announce the winner on May 1.

The GroundTruth fellowship will be awarded to a correspondent working on the ground in the Middle East with a minimum of three years of experience.

We are looking for a talented journalist who is early in his/her career and who presents the most worthy project idea for how to cover the aftermath of events in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria and elsewhere that have unfolded over the last three years and come to be known as the Arab Spring, or the Arab Awakening.

The reporting fellow will prepare a series of guest posts for the “GroundTruth” blog, and a more polished work of enterprise reporting will be published as a GlobalPost 'Special Report.' The fellowship is intended to produce a written body of work, but applications that include audio, photography or video will be considered as well.

A three-year grant for the 'GroundTruth fellowship for reporting in the Middle East' was provided by The Correspondents Fund, and this is the second year of the fellowship, which will be directed by GlobalPost co-founder and Editor-at-Large Charles M. Sennott. The fellowship is part of the mission of the foundation-supported initiative known as The GroundTruth Project, which is headed by Sennott, and which seeks to train the next generation of international correspondents. The Overseas Press Club Foundation, on which Sennott serves as a board member, administers the grant.

In announcing the fellowship, Sennott said, “we are very thankful to The Correspondents Fund for their support and we look forward to seeing the ideas of the applicants.”

“'GroundTruth' is a simple but profound belief that you need to be there on the ground to get the story. Sadly, this craft of field reporting is threatened by diminishing resources in the news business. Through this fellowship, we are reasserting our commitment to providing support for correspondents who live and breathe the story, who speak the language and who know the people and understand the culture from where they are reporting,” Sennott added.

“During the last several years,” Sennott said, “the Overseas Press Club and the community of foreign correspondents have lost too many great journalists in the Middle East who have risked their lives pursuing the stories that matter. This fellowship is in their collective honor and particularly in the spirit of the late foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid,” who had a long and distinguished reporting career in the Middle East for The A.P., The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

“More than anything, Anthony was a listener. He always had his ear to the ground,” said Sennott, referring to Shadid, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, who died in 2012 while on assignment in Syria for the Times.

Applicants are asked to submit a CV, five news writing samples, a cover letter to Charles Sennott explaining why they are qualified, and a project memo of no more than 500 words outlining an idea for one long-form narrative piece or several shorter pieces that would form a series. Please also include a proposed budget for travel for these pieces.

The deadline for applications has been extended to April 18.

Please send applications to thegroundtruthproject@gmail.com. The winner will be announced on May 1 and the work will take place on a mutually agreed upon schedule.

About GlobalPost
GlobalPost is the Peabody Award-winning world news site with outstanding original reporting from country-based journalists in all regions of the world. Noted by The New York Times as “offering a mix of news and features that only a handful of other news organizations can rival,” GlobalPost offers fresh, in-depth perspective on the changing global picture that affects us all by combining traditional journalistic values and the power of new media.

About The GroundTruth Project
The GroundTruth Project is a foundation-supported initiative led by GlobalPost co-founder and editor-at-large Charles M. Sennott. GroundTruth is dedicated to training the next generation of foreign correspondents in the digital age and produces Special Reports published on GlobalPost. It is focused on issues of social justice including human rights, freedom of expression, emerging democracies, the environment, religious affairs and global health.