YouTube and Pulitzer team up for contest

Citizen journalists around the world are being given the chance to strut their journalistic stuff online, with Project: Report, a journalism contest that YouTube and the Pulitzer Center have cooked up.

According to the Project: Report site, the contest is “intended
for non-professional, aspiring journalists to tell stories that might
not otherwise be told.”

The contest has three stages, each with a different reporting assignment. Prizes for each stage will be tech goodies from Sony and the ultimate winner will get a
$10,000 journalism fellowship with the Pulitzer Center to report on a
story abroad.

The excellent Mediashift blog has a detailed post on Project: Report that includes all the specifics about the contest. Mediashift associate editor Mike Rosen-Molina writes:

“It’s an unmistakable sign that the site is growing up, struggling to
become something more than a repository of funny videos of cats falling
off of things while still maintaining the community vibe that’s made it
so popular. Project: Report aims to motivate people outside the
established news media — the ordinary people that make up the bulk of
YouTube viewers — to take up reporting. The contest is open only to
non-professional journalists; even frequent freelancers are excluded
under the rules, although journalism students are encouraged to
compete. The idea of using a payment incentive to encourage quality
reporting may mean that YouTube soon won’t just have an army of citizen
journalists but an army of quality citizen journalists (or semi-pro journalists), interested in telling stories rather than just passing along comic moments.”

For the first assignment reporters are asked to profile a person in their own community that would make a compelling story. The submission deadline is Oct. 5.