WAN-Ifra has added a category for social, mobile and local activities to its annual World Young Reader Prize.
The award – for ‘making a SoMoLo connection’ – reflects changing media habits of young people and the challenges they pose for traditional news media.
Young readership development executive director Aralynn McMane says on the fifteenth anniversary of the prizes, awards must change to reflect the way the news media business itself is changing: “The new award will be made to the newspaper company that uses mobile telephones and social media to create effective local engagement with the young.”
It is one of four new categories added in 2013. The others are:
- ‘Going green’, which will honour projects that give the young guidance and hope for improving the environment;
- ‘Helping with health’, which will honour projects that help the young have better health or medical care; and
- ‘Learning with news’, which will honour projects that use newspaper content in education, teach news literacy, the practice of professional journalism or the importance an fragility of press freedom.
The new categories join the core Young Reader Prize categories of brand, editorial, enduring excellence, public service, the Natasa prize for printing plants and Young Reader Newspaper of the Year.
Applications close on June 13. Details at www.wan-ifra.org/worldyoungreaderprize