DEADLINE: True Story Award

The True Story Award is a global journalism prize. It aims to make reporters' voices known beyond the borders of their home countries, and in doing so to increase the diversity of perspectives offered in the media. The True Story Award will be conferred by an independent foundation and honors reporters writing in 10 languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Persian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish), who have distinguished themselves by the depth of their research, the quality of their journalism and its social relevance. Fifty jury members from 29 countries will select the 36 best texts of the year and then select a winner. The winner will receive 25,000 Swiss francs in prize money, while all nominated texts will be awarded 1000 Swiss francs each.

In addition to the ten most widely spoken languages, texts in all other languages are also accepted in the categories Europe, World I (African and Middle East countries) and World II (Asian countries). See conditions.

The True Story Award is open to all journalists anywhere in the world who produce written reportage. It will be given to the kind of reportage that demonstrates the following qualities: a narrative account of real events, in-depth research on location, rigorously researched facts and linguistic richness. Pure essays, biographies and historical reconstructions are ineligible (although of course something of these can be present in all reportage). The texts’ length should be between 3,000 and 17,000 words.

Deadline is November 5, 2023. Texts must be published in print or online between Sep 1, 2022 and Sep 30, 2023. They may have been published in daily or weekly newspapers, magazines or on websites. Re-published texts, books and manuscripts are ineligible.

Click here for the call for entries and the conditions.