OPC Foundation board member and co-founder of GlobalPost Charles M. Sennott announced the launch of a $10,000 GroundTruth Fellowship for a reporting project in the Middle East at the OPC Scholars luncheon on February 22. The fellowship will be awarded to a correspondent working on the ground in the Middle East with a minimum of three years of experience.
“GroundTruth” is a belief that you need to be there on the ground to get the story,” Sennott said in a statement. “In an age in which too many journalists operate out of cubicles, we are committed to providing support for correspondents who live and breathe the story, who speak the language and who know the people and understand the culture from where they are reporting.”
The fellowship is in their collective honor and particularly in the spirit of the late foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid, who had a long and distinguished reporting career in the Middle East for The Associated Press, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times. OPC member Shadid who won the OPC Hal Boyle Award and was a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, died last year while on assignment in Syria.
Applicants are asked to submit a CV, five news writing samples, a cover letter to Charles Sennott explaining why they are qualified and a project memo of no more than 500 words outlining an idea for one long-form narrative piece or several shorter pieces that would form a series. Applications should be e-mailed to ejudem@globalpost.com. Deadline: March 28. The winner will be announced mid-April and the work will take place on a mutually agreed upon schedule for publishing on GlobalPost.com in September 2013.
The three-year grant was provided by The Correspondents Fund and the fellowship will be directed by Sennott. The OPC Foundation will administer the grant.