The deadline is approaching for the Bruce Jesson Foundation journalism prize competition, offering funding for high-quality critical journalism. The 2013 competition opened as recent winner Max Rashbrooke unveiled a new book supported by his Jesson award: Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis – and what we can do about it (Bridget Williams Books, 2013).

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”. The Foundation holds an Annual Lecture and awards two journalism prizes, presented at the lecture in October:

• The Senior Journalism Prize is self-nominated and invites applications for an award of up to NZ$4,000 to assist a project aiming to produce the kind of critical and analytical journalism exemplified by Jesson’s work.
• The Emerging Journalism Prize has a fixed emolument of $1,000 and recognises “outstanding recent work by New Zealand print journalism students.” It is nominated by the heads of New Zealand journalism schools or journalism programme leaders for published work by student journalists.

Entries for the 2013 Bruce Jesson Journalism Prizes are now invited both from self-nominating senior journalists and the Heads of New Zealand journalism schools. Entries will be assessed by members of the Foundation’s Journalism Sub-committee: Geoff Kemp (convenor), Camille Guy, Joe Atkinson, Simon Collins, and Jon Stephenson.

Details are available by clicking the ‘Awards’ tab at the top of this page. Applications and nominations (including copies of nominated work) can be submitted online, or mailed to Dr Geoff Kemp, C/- Political Studies Department, University of Auckland, PB 92019, Auckland (g.kemp@auckland.ac.nz).

The DEADLINE for receipt of nominations is 5pm, Monday, September 30, 2013.