Bruce Jesson Foundation

These are available as a PDF (97 MB) from either

Dr Brent Wheeler
P.O. Box 12057
Maori Hill
Dunedin 9010

or

Dr Joe Atkinson
C/- Political Studies Department,
University of Auckland, PB 92019,
AUCKLAND

The Bruce Jesson Foundation was established in 1999 to commemorate one of New Zealand’s greatest political journalists, the late Bruce Jesson, by promoting vigorous political, social and economic investigation, debate, analysis and reporting in New Zealand.

To this end, since its inception the Foundation has sponsored an annual Bruce Jesson Memorial Lecture in Auckland and, since 2004, it has awarded an annual Bruce Jesson Journalism Prize. The latter award involves an emolument of up to NZ$3,000 to assist writers aiming to produce the kind of critical and analytical journalism exemplified by Jesson’s work as a columnist in Metro magazine, as editor of The Republican and as the author of several influential pieces of book journalism. It is self-nominated and dedicated to in-depth journalism projects on public issues that might not be undertaken, completed, or published without non-commercial subsidy.

The new Bruce Jesson Emerging Journalism Prize is being introduced this year specifically to reward “outstanding recent work by New Zealand print journalism students.” It shares the existing award’s broad aim of seeking "critical, informed, analytical and creative journalism or writing which will contribute to public debate in New Zealand on an important issue or issues," but it differs in three important respects:

a) It is focused more narrowly on the already published work of journalism students (though, exceptional unpublished work may occasionally be considered).
b) It seeks nominations from Heads of Journalism Schools rather than from the journalists themselves.
c) It offers a fixed emolument of $500, together with certificates of commendation for one or more runners-up.

Nominations for the 2009 Bruce Jesson Emerging Journalism Prize are hereby sought from the Heads of New Zealand journalism schools. Nominees’ work will be assessed by members of the Foundation’s Journalism Subcommittee: Joe Atkinson (convener), Simon Collins, Jon Stephenson, and David Robie.

Nominations together with copies of nominated work (preferably in electronic form) should be forwarded by no later than Monday, October 19, 2009 to:

Dr Joe Atkinson, Secretary of the Bruce Jesson Foundation,
C/- Political Studies Department,
University of Auckland, PB 92019, AUCKLAND.