Press Release

2018 Science Journalism Award Nominations Due March 15th

By SpaceRef Editor
January 16, 2018
Filed under ,

The world’s largest organization of Earth and space scientists, the American Geophysical Union, is accepting nominations for its 2018 journalism awards through 15 March 2018. This year, AGU plans to present the two awards listed below. The authoritative statements of the rules governing these awards are available at the included links. Submissions for all awards should be made through AGU’s online nomination system. Please see instructions for using the online nomination system at the bottom of this release.

* David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism — News [http://honors.agu.org/medals-awards/david-perlman-award-for-excellence-in-science-journalism%E2%80%94news], recognizing excellence in science news reporting, generally produced under deadline pressure of one week or less. It is named for David Perlman, Science Editor of the San Francisco Chronicle. Submit a nomination: https://agu-journalism.secure-platform.com/a/organizations/main/home

* Walter Sullivan Award for Excellence in Science Journalism — Features [http://honors.agu.org/medals-awards/walter-sullivan-award-for-excellence-in-science-journalism-features], recognizing excellence in science feature reporting, generally produced under a deadline of longer than one week. It is named for the late Walter Sullivan of The New York Times, who was the first recipient of the award. Submit a nomination: https://agu-journalism.secure-platform.com/a/organizations/main/home

The Perlman and Sullivan awards each honor specific stories reported by journalists in the past year (i.e., 2018 awards honor 2017 stories). Journalists are welcome to nominate their own work for these awards, or someone may nominate a story on the reporter’s behalf. A nominee may submit only one entry for each award in a given year (i.e., one entry for the Perlman and one entry for the Sullivan). Each award consists of a plaque and a $5,000 award.

For the Perlman and Sullivan awards, nominations may be from any country, in any language (English translation required), and in any news medium, except books. Entries will be judged by how well they meet one or more of the following three criteria: Brings new information or concepts about AGU sciences to the public’s attention, identifies and corrects misconceptions about AGU sciences, and makes AGU sciences accessible and interesting to general audiences, without sacrificing accuracy.

Both the Perlman and Sullivan award selection committees will also consider accuracy, initiative, originality and clarity. The Perlman award selection committee may also consider the timeliness of the news story, whether it was published first, before other media outlets, and whether it contains information of exceptional originality, importance, surprise or secrecy.

The deadline to submit nominations for AGU’s 2018 journalism awards is 15 March 2018. AGU will present the awards on 12 December 2018 at the AGU Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C.

Contact:
Nanci Bompey
+1 (202) 777-7524
nbompey@agu.org

Instructions for using the online nomination system (available as a PDF at https://news.agu.org/files/2017/01/submission-instructions.pdf):

To submit a nomination, visit the journalism awards nomination system home page [https://agu-journalism.secure-platform.com/a/organizations/main/home]. Before you can submit a nomination, you will need to login to the system by clicking the “Log in here” button on the left-hand side of the screen.

You will then be directed to a login screen. You will need to login to the system using your AGU account. If you do not have an AGU account, you will need to create one by selecting the “Sign me up as a new user” and filling out the required information. (If your organization is not listed or can’t be found, please enter Organization Not Listed in the “Organization Name” field and fill out the “Suggest Your Organization” field with the name of your organization).

After logging in, you will see the home page for the journalism awards. This year, AGU is accepting nominations for the Perlman and Sullivan awards. To submit a nomination, click on the text “Click here to submit a nomination.”

On the nomination form page, please first select the award for which you are entering a submission (Perlman or Sullivan) using the dropdown “Category” menu.

Fill out the nomination form. When you have completed the nomination form, you can “Save” the nomination to come back to later, or “Save and Finalize” to submit the nomination.

You can access saved nominations using the “In Progress” tab under “My Nominations” on the left-hand side of the screen. Click “Edit” to edit the nomination or “Remove” to delete the nomination.

You can access submitted nominations under the “Complete” tab under “My Nominations” on the left-hand side of the screen.

To submit an additional nomination, click the “Submit” button on the top navigation bar. A nominee may submit only one entry for each award in a given year (i.e., one entry for the Perlman and one entry for the Sullivan).

The American Geophysical Union is dedicated to advancing the Earth and space sciences for the benefit of humanity through its scholarly publications, conferences, and outreach programs. AGU is a not-for-profit, professional, scientific organization representing 60,000 members in 137 countries.

SpaceRef staff editor.