Celebrating Excellence in Journalism

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The U.S. Embassy in Cameroon announces an open competition for applications to carry out a program to identify and celebrate, such as through an award ceremony, examples of high-quality journalism in Cameroon. Please carefully follow all instructions below. Please carefully follow all instructions below. Priority Region: None; all regions of the country should be equally represented. Program Objectives: Promote ethical, high-quality journalism in Cameroon by bringing positive attention to examples of excellence in the profession and recognizing best practices being observed. Encourage journalists practicing high-quality journalism to continue doing so. Raise awareness with the public and among journalists about what high-quality, ethical journalism looks like. Provide role models for other journalists, especially younger generations and journalism students, who to others demonstrate through their work that it is possible to practice high-quality journalism in the challenging Cameroonian context. This grant will fund an award ceremony or other program for journalists, bloggers, and media outlets in Cameroon. The awards may cover different topics of reporting, including but not limited to: democracy, human rights, corruption/governance, COVID-19, health (non-Coronavirus topics), regional security, gender issues, press freedom, and environment (e.g. illegal mining, poaching, etc.). The grantee must establish clear and fair criteria by which entries will be evaluated that represent accepted industry standards of excellence, quality journalism, and ethics. We seek to promote journalism for the purpose of informing and educating citizens to be effective and active members of society. The grantee must also establish an inclusive process for the submission or nomination of entries for consideration and the selection of a credible panel of judges (which may consist of Cameroonians and/or Americans, media professionals and/or academic lecturers of journalism, etc.) to choose which entries will be recognized. The proposal should include a category to honor student journalists who shows a good mastery of best practices for a beginner. Awards or prizes may include cash but should not be solely or predominantly cash. Values or amounts of awards or prizes should be sufficient to convey prestige and seriousness in recognizing excellence of those who demonstrate respect for professional standards and ethics. It should also seek to boost respect for these standards among other journalism practitioners in Cameroon and serve as a motivational factor in demonstrating that adhering to standards of excellence can be rewarded.

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