AFP Invites Journalists in Asia to Submit Entries for Kate Webb Prize

The international news agency Agence France-Presse - more commonly known as AFP - is inviting locally-hired journalists working in Asia to submit entries for its annual Kate Webb Prize, worth 3,000 Euros.

Applications must be made by 30 April 2013, and the winner will be announced in May.

The prize is named after Kate Webb, one of the finest correspondents to have worked for AFP, who died in 2007 at the age of 64. Kate would have celebrated her 70th birthday on 24 March.

“The Kate Webb Award offers international recognition for journalistic excellence to locally-hired journalists reporting the news, very often at the risk of life or liberty, from across the Asia-Pacific region,” said AFP’s Asia Pacific Director Gilles Campion. “AFP knows, as Kate knew, the core role of local reporters to domestic media well as international news companies in bringing depth and breadth to news coverage of Asia.”

Born in New Zealand, Kate Webb earned a reputation as a fearless reporter while covering wars and other historic events in Asia during a career spanning four decades. She made her name in Vietnam and also worked in Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, India, South Korea and the Middle East.

The prize is administered by the AFP Foundation – a non-profit-making organization set up to promote press freedom through training journalists in developing countries – and by the Webb family. It was first awarded in 2008, to Pakistani reporter Mushtaq Yusufzai for his coverage of the dangerous tribal lands bordering on Afghanistan. There was no winner last year.

In 2011, the prize was awarded to Dilnaz Boga, an Indian reporter and photographer, for her courageous investigative work in Indian-administered Kashmir. Boga had spent a year in Srinagar working for the news portal Kashmir Dispatch as well as several international publications and websites.

This year’s prize is open to local reporters, photographers and broadcast journalists in Asia, including camera crew, for work done between 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2012. Stringers and freelance journalists can also submit entries as well as people employed by local media.

Articles and broadcast material can be submitted in English or any Asian national language, provided that there is English translation which has been certified as accurate.

Applications should be sent to katewebbprize@afp.com.