The Bruce Jesson Foundation is to wind up at the end of this year.

We are making a final call for award applications before we go.

The Bruce Jesson Foundation, established in 2001 in memory of the Auckland journalist and politician Bruce Jesson, has funded 16 ground-breaking journalistic projects that have made an impact on public awareness and debate in Aotearoa New Zealand since 2004.

It has also held https://www.brucejesson.com/lectures-2/ since former Prime Minister David Lange, a personal friend of Bruce Jesson, gave the inaugural lecture in 2000, a year after Jesson’s death.

The foundation is calling for applications by 30 September for one final funding round for journalistic projects, and plans one final public lecture, but will wind up at the end of the year because of a lack of ongoing funding.

Foundation co-chairs Dr Maria Armoudian and Simon Collins say they are extremely sad that the journalism grants are ending at the same time as the impending closure of Newshub and drastic cuts at TVNZ which The Spinoff writer Madeleine Holden says have jointly slashed the already-dwindling number of Kiwi journalists by a further 15%.

“This is a very worrying time for journalism in New Zealand, which makes independent funders like the Bruce Jesson Foundation all the more precious,” Armoudian and Collins say.

“We are extremely proud of the work that the foundation has helped to make possible over the past 20 years.

“The journalists we have supported have exposed aspects of our society and foreign policy that would not have come to light otherwise. They have sparked public debate, and in many cases have led to changes in government policy and business behaviour.

“However, unfortunately, we have never had a secure source of funding. We have had some funding from royalties from Professor Andrew Sharp’s collected writings of Bruce Jesson published in 2005, To Build A Nation, and we received a much-appreciated bequest from Wellington peace campaigner Diana Unwin, who died in 2014. But our only ongoing funding has been small donations from people attending our annual lectures and a handful of personal supporters.

“Our trustees have always been unpaid volunteers, and repeated attempts to find other sources of funding over the years have been unsuccessful.”

Bruce Jesson’s daughter Dr Linley Jesson, a Rotorua scientist and a trustee of the foundation, says the Jesson family acknowledges that many charities have a natural life cycle.

“Charities are set up to respond to a particular need, or to honour someone’s contribution, but needs change and what was a good idea originally may not be sustainable 20 years later,” she says.

“The Bruce Jesson Foundation has helped to shine a light on areas of Aotearoa New Zealand society since 2004. Now it is time for someone else to pick up the torch and help to sustain independent journalism in the future.”

The Foundation seeks applications by 30 September for projects of “critical, informed, analytical and creative journalism or writing which will contribute to public debate in New Zealand on an important issue or issues”. The full criteria and a link for applications are on the website.

We need your help to continue our work

Our democracy depends on the talents and efforts of those relatively few journalists, commentators and outlets willing to challenge the status quo. Their work allows us to challenge the limits to political debate in New Zealand.

Bruce Jesson was one of New Zealand’s great thinkers, a social critic whose writing put the establishment and the then new breed of ’money men’ under the microscope as New Zealand went through convulsive change in the 1980s and 1990s. Yet Bruce was also welcome in board rooms and around council tables. His fine mind, his pragmatism and his collegial attitude endeared him to business leaders and politicians, even if he couldn’t be persuaded to credulously follow their short-sighted and sometimes damaging policies.

When he died the Bruce Jesson Foundation was established to celebrate his legacy and to promote activities that would generate critical, informed, analytical and creative contributions to political debate in New Zealand and about New Zealand.

In these days of weak traditional media this task is ever more critical.

That’s why we are inviting you to join us in helping apply intelligence where there is tabloidism, informed analysis where there is bigotry, reason where there is sensationalism, and substance where there is shallow, lazy thinking.

It’s critical that high quality journalism endures. We make grants every year to journalists who need support to undertake brave and important work, and awards to promising journalism students who are the profession’s future.

But, apart from royalties from a book of Bruce Jesson’s collected articles, the trust has always depended on donations. In the last few years those donations, at our annual lecture and otherwise, have barely covered the $4000 a year in journalism grants and awards (our accounts are available on the Charities Commission web site). We have used up most of the reserves that we built up in earlier years and we now need to develop a more sustainable system of ongoing donations that can keep the grants and awards going at least at their current level, and preferably increase them.

To continue and expand the Foundation’s activities your support is crucial. Without it our ongoing work is in jeopardy. By contributing to the Bruce Jesson Foundation you will help us continue our efforts. Small contributions are very welcome, especially regular ones.

Please become a supporter today by following this link to our

Contribution Page

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBuE96GeDjQ

Click on the still above to play. A direct link to the YouTube video is here.