Award for reporting on victims of armed violence

The Press Institute of India and the International Committee of the Red Cross have announced the creation of the PII-ICRC awards for reporting on the fate of victims in situations of armed violence.

The article, or a series of articles on a single theme, should have been published in an Indian national or regional newspaper or magazine in any Indian language (with translation) or English.

Entries may be sent to editor.pii@gmail.com or posted to Editor, Press Institute of India, RIND Premises, Second Main Road, CPT Taramani Campus, Madras – 600 113 on or before August 30. Phone 044-22542344 for further details.

Three cash prizes will be awarded and presented in the last quarter of 2008 in New Delhi.

India’s first manuscript assessment service is here

PRESS RELEASE: Itching to write a book? Don’t know if your manuscript is up to it? Don’t know how to polish it and get it print-ready?

If your answer is yes, yes and yes, respectively, then you might like to check out Writer’s Side, “India’s first professional manuscript assessment service” launched by Kanishka Gupta, formerly an editor with Platform and Siyahi.

Writer’s Side offers services like manuscript reading, critiqueing, and editing (ranging from proofreading to substantive editing) for both fiction and non-fiction. It also recommends manuscripts to scouts, literary agencies and publishing houses.

A team of nine “experienced and eclectic editors” assess the manuscripts and help shape them for publication. Writer’s Side is currently open to dealing with literary and commercial fiction, women’s writing, dark novels, children’s fiction, science fiction, business management books. It is also open to recommending books already published in India for foreign markets.

For more details, visit the website www.writersside.com, or contact kanishka500@gmail.com

NBA workshop on media and development

PRESS RELEASE: Sarvodaya Press Service, Indore, Vikas Samwad, Bhopal, and the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) have jointly organised the “Sanjay Sangvai Memorial Consultation on Media and Development” at Badwani, Madhya Pradesh, from May 21-23.

The tentative outline of the programme includes:

1) Current Paradigm of Development: Issues relating to big dams and water management; land acquisition and displacement.

2) Media and People’s Movements: Political role and space.

3) Media and Development: In the context of neo-liberal policies.

The workshop, which will be followed by a visit to the Narmada valley, will bring together veteran and eminent journalists of the print and electronic media from all over the country.

Further details from bandwani@narmada.org

Announcement: Vinod Mehta in Bangalore

PRESS RELEASE: Vinod Mehta, editor-in-chief of Outlook magazine, is to deliver the convocation address to the graduating class of 2008 at the Indian Institute of Journalism & New Media (IIJNM), Bangalore, on Saturday, 3 May 2008, according to a press release from associate dean, Kanchan Kaur. The time is 10.30 am. The location: IIJNM, opposite BGS international school, Nityanandanagar, on the Bangalore-Mysore highway, after Kengeri.

P. Sainath lecture on media in Bangalore

P. Sainath, the Magsaysay Award winning rural affairs editor of The Hindu, will deliver a lecture on the media in Bangalore on Thursday, 27 March 2008. The lecture has been organised by the cultural tabloid Janashakti. The venue is the Senate hall of Central College. The time is 4 pm.

Also read: ‘A media politically free but chained by profits’

‘Take big steps, urgent steps, fast-paced steps’

‘Conventional journalism serves the powerful’

Ramnath Goenka Journalism Awards

The Ramnath Goenka Foundation is inviting entries for the third annual Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards. India’s biggest media awards, with 23 categories and over Rs 25 lakh as prize money, has added one more category, Excellence in Civic Journalism, this year.

The awards will be for the following categories:

• Journalist of the Year (Print & TV),
• Reporting from J&K and the Northeast (Print & TV);
• Excellence in Journalism, Hindi (Print & Broadcast);
• Excellence in Journalism, Regional Languages (Print & Broadcast);
• Reporting on Environment (Print & Broadcast);
• Reporting India Invisible (Print & Broadcast);
• Foreign Correspondent Covering India ( Print, Radio or TV);
• Business and Economic Journalism (Print & Broadcast);
• Political Reporting (Print & TV);
• Sports Journalism (Print & TV);
• Film & TV Journalism (Print &TV);
• Books (Non-fiction);
• Reporting on HIV/AIDS (Print, English & Marathi); and Civic Reporting (Print).

The award for HIV/AIDS reporting is instituted in association with USAID, Avert Society and Health Communication Partnership/Johns Hopkins University (HCP/JHU). The two award winners, one each in English and Marathi, will be nominated to attend the three-week Leadership in Strategic Health Communication Workshop at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health/Centre for Communication Programs in Baltimore, USA, in June 2008.

The new award for civic reporting has been instituted in memory of the former Resident Editor of The Indian Express in Pune, Prakash Kardaley. This award will honour a print journalist whose sustained effort highlights a civic issue and forces the authorities to find a solution to it. Kardaley, who defined pro-active journalism in Pune, was also one of the prime movers behind the Right to Information Act.

The presenting sponsor of the RNG Awards for Excellence in Journalism this year will be S. Kumars Nationwide Limited. The last date for submission of entries is 15 April 2008. Reports published or telecast between 1 April 2006, and 31 December 2007, are eligible to be submitted for this year’s awards.

Entries invited for Miskloc cine festival

MEDIA RELEASE: Do you really feel that filmmaking is the most splendid activity of the world? Would you gladly meet people who have the same hobby; would you watch movies with pleasure; would you happily get new acquaintances, and would you really measure your strength in filmmaking with somebody?

Films, exhibitions, performances, discussions. Do what thousands of people did in the previous years and come to participate in the programs of Cinefest!

Come to Miskolc, where in the course of a unique event you can participate in hundreds of programs and–on the top of that–all these are free of charge!

The rules and conditions are the following: The director of the entry film must be under the age of 35 when shooting the movie, and the completed work has to be finished after 1 January 2006. We are waiting for applications from all over the world. There is no charge of application. The screening of the competition films–previously chosen and accepted by a pre-jury–will take place between 14 and 21 September 2008, in Miskolc.

The prizes of the festival will be donated by an international jury. The works will be rewarded by categories; there will also be a main prize of the festival and lots of special prizes. The total amount of the money prizes is 8,000 Euros.

You can choose from five categories when apply: long feature films, short fiction films, documentary films, animation films, experimental films. Otherwise, this year our Special Competition  Category is “Women in Picture”.

Application form on the internet and the regulations can be downloaded from: www.cinefest.hu

One journalist’s plant is another’s campaign

MOUNT PLEASANT, MI: The political crisis sparked by the communist parties’ stand on India’s nuclear deal with the United States is remarkable for one other reason: the strong pro-deal stances taken by English language newspapers based in New Delhi. Almost to a man, they have backed the deal, and ripped the Left for opposing the deal.

But how much of it is good, hard-nosed journalism, and how much of it is fed by American diplomats, who have a vested interest in seeing the deal through, over chocolate cookies?

K.P. Nayar, the Washington-based correspondent of The Telegraph, Calcutta, has a fine piece in today’s issue of the paper. He ends with the paragraphs below which show how maleable New Delhi’s journalists are or can be, for whatever reason.

“In the end, the nuclear deal with the US is not a disease that is eating into the UPA government. The deal is merely symptomatic of what is wrong with it.

“Last year, another aide to US Ambassador David Mulford offered me a story. Actually, it was more of a campaign to change government policy than a single story. I turned it down, but shortly thereafter, the US embassy in New Delhi did manage to change policy in New Delhi by running the campaign in another newspaper.

“That is what happens to a government which is more concerned about opinion in the plush drawing rooms of South Delhi than in the soggy shanties of Bombay’s Dharavi. It is subtle subversion of this kind that Prakash Karat is resisting with his ultimatum, not just the nuclear deal. And there are several members of the UPA cabinet who agree with Karat in principle although they do not endorse his tactics, if only because they may end up losing their jobs”

Read the full article here: Left smarting

‘Because we are all cartoons drawn by God’

In the land of the Indian Institute of Science, the Indian Institute of Management, and the Indian Institute of Information Technology, the nascent Indian Institute of Cartoonists throws open a gallery of cartoons, “to promote the art of cartooning in India.”

View the video here: India’s first cartoon gallery

Calling environment journalists, film-makers

PRESS RELEASE: As part of its annual environment and wildlife film festival CMS Vataran, to be held from September 12 to 16 in New Delhi, Centre for Media Studies (CMS) is inviting entries from print and television journalists.

There are three prizes on offer. Two for the FEJI Young Environmental Journalist, one each in the print and electronic media, which carries a cash prize of Rs 25,000 each. Applicants should be under 35 years of age to qualify for this category.

The other award is for the best television news story in the environment/wildlife category. This carries a cash prize of Rs 50,000. There is no entry fee to take part in the competition. And the last date for receipt for entries is 10 August 2007.

Entries may be sent with a CV and at least three articles or DVDs of telecasts. The articles and news stories should have appeared after 1 January 2006. For non-English entries, an English synopsis is required.

Entries may also be submitted online. For further details, contact Festival Manager Priya Verma (priya[at]cmsindia.org) or on phones 011-24992597, 011-26864020.