Soyombo, editor of TheCable, short-listed for Kurt Schork Awards again

For the second time in three years, ‘Fisayo Soyombo, editor of TheCable, has been short-listed for the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund Awards in International Journalism.

The Kurt Schork awards, which feature two categories, have been held annually since 2002 in honour of American freelance journalist Schork, who was killed in 2000 while on assignment for Reuters in Sierra Leone.

Soyombo was short-listed in the Local reporter category, for his three stories of 2015: an undercover investigation into corruption at Apapa ports, a feature on the practice of female genital mutilation in some parts of Nigeria, and a three-part investigation into Liberia’s post-Ebola recovery.

The Local Reporter award recognises the often over-looked work of journalists in developing nations or countries in transition, who write about events in their homeland.

Also short-listed in the category are two other Nigerians — Olatunji Ololade of The Nation and Motunrayo Joel of Sunday Punch — as well as Aylaa Abo Shahba (Egypt), Chitrangada Choudhury (India), Ray Mwareya (Zimbabwe), Umer Ali (Pakistan) and Brian Ligomeka (Malawi).

Philip Obaji, another Nigerian, is on the short list for the Freelance category, which honours the works of journalists who travel to the world’s conflict zones, usually at great personal risk, to witness and report the impact and consequences of events.

Obaji is joined in the category by James Harkin (Ireland), Antony Lowenstein (Australia), Jeong May (Canada), Sara Williams (UK/Canada), Sophie McBain (UK), Eric Reidy (USA) and Iona Craig (Ireland).

According to a statement by the organisers, this year’s awards attracted 93 entrants — 37 Freelance and 56 Local Reporter — from 36 countries.

Each entrant had to submit three articles published between June 1, 2015 and May 31, 2016.

The winner in each category will be announced in September. The 2016 presentation ceremony, hosted by the Thomson Reuters Foundation in the Thomson Reuters Auditorium, Canary Wharf, London, will hold on Thursday October 27.

The judges for these, the 15th annual awards, are Anna Husarska, freelance journalist and author; Sam Dubberley, co-founder of Eyewitness Media Hub; Samia Nakhoul Reuters middle East editor; and Richard Sambrook, professor of journalism at Cardiff University.

The awards recognise the work of reporters who seek to illuminate the human condition through courageous reporting of conflict, corruption, human rights transgressions and other fundamental issues of the day.

TheCable’s Soyombo was first short-listed for the award in 2014, for ‘Blood on the Plateau’ — a five-part investigative series on the ethnocentric killings in Plateau state, published in December 2013.

That year’s finalists were chosen from “almost 300 stories entered by 93 journalists from 41 countries”. The award was eventually won by Indian journalist, Neha Dixit, for “her courageous and innovative series of undercover reports on rape published by the New York Times, Outlook India, and Yahoo News”.

Soyombo, a 2013 recipient of the Deutsche Welle/Orange Magazine Global Fellowship for Young Journalists, contributes opinions to UAE-headquartered Al Jazeera and Germany-based TAZ.

A finalist for the 2015 Thomson Foundation Young Journalist from the Developing World FPA Award, his works have been translated into French, German and Arabic.