The world’s largest organization of Earth and space scientists, the American Geophysical Union, is accepting nominations for its 2019 journalism awards through 15 March 2019. This year, AGU plans to present the three 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 or by clicking here.

* David Perlman Award for Excellence in Science Journalism — News, recognizing excellence in science news reporting, generally produced under deadline pressure of one week or less. It is named for David Perlman, science Editor (now retired) of the San Francisco Chronicle. Click here to submit a nomination.

* 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. Click here to submit a nomination.

* Robert C. Cowen Award for Sustained Achievement in Science Journalism, recognizing a journalist or team of journalists who have made significant, lasting, and consistent contributions to accurate reporting on the Earth and space sciences for the general public. It is named for Robert C. Cowen, science editor (now retired) of The Christian Science Monitor.

**New this year: Both AGU members and non-members may submit a nomination for the Cowen Award.** Click here to submit a nomination.

The Perlman and Sullivan awards each honor specific stories reported by journalists in the past year (i.e. 2019 awards honor 2018 stories). Journalists are welcome to nominate their own work for these awards, or someone may nominate a story on the reporter’s behalf. Anyone (AGU members and non-members) may submit a nomination for the award. A nominee may only submit one entry or be nominated once for each award in a given year (i.e. one entry for the Perlman and one entry for the Sullivan). However, nominators may submit multiple nominations (nominate multiple people) for each award. 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 Cowen Award celebrates a career of outstanding reporting on Earth and space sciences. Self-nominations are not allowed, but anyone (AGU members and non-members) may submit a nomination for the award. Nominations are open to science journalists (or teams of journalists) who each have, over a period of at least 15 years, made significant, lasting, and consistent contributions to accurate reporting on Earth and space sciences for the general public.

The deadline to submit nominations for AGU’s 2019 journalism awards is 15 March 2019. AGU will present the awards on 11 December 2019 at the AGU Fall Meeting in San Francisco.

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

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. Join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and our other social media channels.

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Instructions for using the online nomination system

To submit a nomination, visit the journalism awards nomination system home page. 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, Sullivan and Cowen 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, Sullivan or Cowen) 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 the Perlman and Sullivan awards in a given year (i.e. one entry for the Perlman and one entry for the Sullivan).