The goal of the competition is to reward the excellence in marketing and creativity in using newsmedia in the media mix. This is the first competition ever to promote the innovation in advertising usng all platforms from newsmedia companies: print, online and mobile. Most likely, the non-traditional advertising solutions (on one platform) and a mix of standard advertising solutions in an innovative way (multiplatform) are sought.

All entries – the best examples from the newsmedia market – will be gathered in one publication: a special report that will be published in both English and Polish. This report is set to be an inspiration for the advertisers, and other publishers, and at the same time to be the proof of strength, innovation and flexibility of newsmedia companies in terms of advertising.

The jury of this competition will be called and recognised by the International Newsmedia Marketing Association in cooperation with the two Polish press associations: Zwiazek Kontroli Dystrybucji Prasy and Polskie Badania Czytelnictwa. Only real campaigns (not advertising offers or possibilities) will be judged. The campaign has to be from the 2009-2011 time period with the use of at least one medium. What counts is the non-traditional use of one platform sollution or creative combination of standard sollutions. The jury will judge ideas for the campaign, creation and its results.

All entries are free and should be submitted online by September 10, 2010. Click here if you are interested in submitting your case study online. For more information please refer to the competition’s announcement site. Remember, all ideas count! Best of luck, and see you in Kraków.

The competition is organised by International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA), and is supported by two Polish media associations: Zwiazek Kontroli Dystrybucji Prasy (ZKDP) and Polskie Badania Czytelnictwa (PBC). The sponsor of the non-traditional advertising awards competition is ATEX.

In an interview for Journalism.co.uk Mr. Grove said:

“News organisations could never afford to have a correspondent in every corner of the world with an eye on every story as it unfolds – but in today’s media landscape, millions of people around the world have the ability to contribute to reporting the news and broadcasting it globally. There is clearly a huge opportunity there.”

Mr. Grove is responsible for the launch of the reporter channel, an additional citizen news channel, and a YouTube competition for aspiring journalists in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. This initiative is called: Project:Report. The aim is: “To tell stories that might not otherwise be told.”

From YouTube’s perspective, news videos from users could help plug a gap in international and hyperlocal coverage, while the site continues to develop relations with “professional content partners” like BBC, Reuters and the New York Times.

Mr. Grove explains:

“We want to break down the barriers to entry to traditional journalism while at the same time upholding the best of traditional journalism values… We think if we do that well we’ll create journalism from out of the YouTube community that meets the quality test of any ‘traditional’ journalist.”

Poland’s Gazeta has won the annual World Young Reader Prize contest organized by the World Association of Newspapers: the top award and two jury commendations.

“This is the first time one single newspaper has taken home so many awards,” says Aralynn McMane, director of Young Readership Development at the WAN.

The international judges add: “Gazeta Wyborcza has made it clear that it is a leader for not only Europe, but for the world in engaging young people effectively on multiple platforms in the important issues of the day.”

Why do young people choose to read Gazeta?

Gazeta Wyborcza and education

We have not started to engage young readers since last year. We have done it for many years.

We have cared about quality of education at Polish schools and we have supported reforms of our school system. We have invited teachers and students to participate in the reforms with our social campaigns like “School with Class” and “Students with Class”.

We always look for new and innovative ways to report about schools and students’ issues. This year we wanted to check if it is true that learning at schools is easier now than it used be when we all were children. Many parents think like this.

We have sent two adult reporters – Marek Was and Marek Sterlingow – to spend a week at school in a class with 14-years-olds. They had to do homeworks, write exams, answer to teachers’ questions in front of their class.

This brave venture of two guys in their mid-30s and mid-40s started a series of advice articles called “Rehearsals for parents”.

“We believed that before we could teach parents how to help their kids at school, we had had to recall how it really was when we were kids,” says Marek Sterlingow. “We revealed that children nowadays have as many duties at school as we had in the past. In my opinion the school has not changed a lot since I were a student myself.”

For years, Gazeta helps parents and students to prepare themselves to the exams. We publish sample tests and we provide answers to the real exams on a day after children take them at schools, so they can check how they have performed. We also run numerous educational web services for students and parents, for example UczymySie.pl (“We teach and learn”) where some parents advice the others about homeworks.

Last autumn we went even farther – we organized “real” exams at schools.

There is a tradition at Polish secondary schools that they run trial exams several months before the real ones just to make students familiar with requirements and let them check themselves their knowledge and skills.

Unfortunately, last year the Polish Central Examination Board dropped these trial exams due to lack of money and organizational problems. We got many calls and letters from disappointed teachers, parents and students.

“So when a publishing house Operon, whom we often cooperate with, came out with an idea to organize trial exams by ourselves, we felt we had to support our readers,” says Beata Jaworowska, deputy promotions manager of Gazeta.

Gazeta and Operon prepared questions, printed and distributed over one million exam sheets that resembled the real ones.

80 per cent schools in Poland entered this venture and 360 thousand students attended trial exams.

Gazeta Wyborcza and the open society

Last year the World Association of Newspapers awarded our campaign to save a river Rospuda.

You can watch a story of this protest presented by Gazeta’s Grzegorz Piechota at the WAN congress in Gothenburg, Sweden:

This year the association has awarded another protest that engaged many young readers in Poland – it was against Chinese policy in Tibet.

Gazeta invited readers to show their solidarity with Tibetans. We devoted the front and back page of our Monday feature supplement Duzy Format (“Large Format”) to print the flag of Tibet. Readers could use this flag when demonstrating their support for Tibetans or their disappointment with Chinese policies there.

Readers documented their actions by themselves – they were taking pictures and uploading them to Gazeta’s website. Within a week we got over 1000 photos and printed some of them in the newspaper.

This campaign has got an additional jury commendation at this year’s World Young Reader Prize competition. The judges comment: “It is very hard to get local involvement for an international issue. Few newspapers showed anywhere near the commitment for the attack on human rights in Tibet, especially as early and effectively.”

To watch a gallery of readers’ photos and learn more details about this campaign, go to another forum4editors.com story: “Readers show their solidarity with Tibetans.”

Gazeta Wyborcza and sport

During this year’s UEFA European Football Championship we organized our own Mini-Euro for kids in a city of Gdansk.

Football became hot in Poland this season as Polish team qualified to this championship for the first time in history.

“We simply responded to a growing interest in football and we convinced a city council to support our activities,” explains Jaroslaw Kopec who is responsible for promotions in our Gdansk local office.

Gazeta invited its youngest readers – 11-years old and younger – to form teams of 3 to 5 members and apply together to our Mini-Euro. Each team took the colours of one of national football teams playing in the real European Championship.

The final round of Mini-Euro was played on 8th, 12th and 16th of June, when in Austria the Polish national team was fighting (and failing) to leave the group. Unlike their older collegues, young footballers representing Poland in Mini-Euro were able to crush “Germans” 14:7, they won with „Croatia” 8:5 and lost only with “Austria” 3:6.

“Unlike in the real championship ‘Austria’ made it to the finals and beated ‘The Netherlands’ in great style,” recalls Jaroslaw Kopec.

The WAN jury has given his commendation to this campaign: “The paper turned a defeat into something to make young readers proud.”

Gazeta’s offer to young readers

All these awarded campaigns and editorial series are only small parts of Gazeta’s printed offer targeted to young generation.

Young people take part in debates organized by the newspaper – for example about migration, rats’ race at work, the quality of Polish universities.

They also like Gazeta’s supplements like the Friday one on entertainment called Co Jest Grane (“What’s up”), Monday recruitment one Gazeta Praca (“Newspaper on Jobs”), Gazeta Sport (on sports) and our features magazine Duzy Format (“Large Format”).

To learn more about Gazeta’s supplements, visit our official website for advertisers (in English).

(Article contributed by Ewa Tomaszewicz, head of educational content at Gazeta Wyborcza and its online services)

A special “Literacy and Newspapers” prize was also awarded, to the Lexington-Herald Leader in the United States, for a serialized story project designed to teach children about US history and democracy.

Young Reader Newspaper of the Year

The Gazeta Wyborcza, with a circulation of nearly half a million daily, up more than 3 percent last year, has demonstrated a commitment to attracting younger readers in a country where half the population is under 35.

In addition to the top award, the newspaper won Jury Commendations for two projects: 

• a tie-in for young readers with the Euro 2008 football matches,
• and for a campaign that helped readers protest against Chinese policies in Tibet (you can read more about this campaign on forum4editors.com).

“This newspaper clearly engages its young readers on many fronts – from sport to education to human rights – in creative and effective ways that are sure to build loyalty,” the Paris-based WAN said in making the award.

Other winners announced are:

• Editorial (Winner) for “Le P’tit 5 minutes” children’s infographic page
  Le Journal de Montréal (Montreal, circulation 250,000 daily)
• Newspapers in Education (Winner) for “News to Use” for young employees
  Rheinische Post (Düsseldorf, circulation 404,744 daily)
• Public Service (Winner) for “National Teachers’ Strike Recovery Initiative”
  Four groups: Independent Newspapers, Media 24, Avusa, AIP (Associated Independent Press), with a combined total daily circulation of more than 1.4 million copies.
• Brand (Winner) for “Green Shoppers Campaign” around eco-friendly, branded bags
  Express & Echo  (Exeter, circulation 22,000 daily)

Commendations and special mention awards

• Editorial category – Five plus one special mention: O Dia (Brazil), Zero Hora (Brazil), 24Sata (Croatia), Ekstra Bladet, (Denmark), plus a special mention for L’Equipe (France)
• Brand category – Two: Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (Germany), Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland)
• Newspapers In Education category – One: Braunschweiger Zeitung (Germany).
• Public Service category – Four: Kakhetis Khma (Georgia), Malayala Manorama (India), Irish Examiner (Ireland) Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland)

Details of the winning entries can be found at WAN website.

The annual World Young Reader Prizes, which WAN has awarded since 1998, are supported by the paper manufacturer Norske Skog. The prizes will be presented at the annual WAN Readership Conference, to be held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on 16 and 17 October.

“The competition is growing in both quantity and quality: Total entries at 79 up from last year) from 35 countries, also up from last year. It’s clear how tough the decision was simply by how many jury commendations were awarded,” Aralynn McMane, director of Young Readership Development at the WAN, told forum4editors.com. “There was a very great deal of creative work this year, and not just by big papers going it alone. One laureat is a 5000 weekly from Georgia and another represented a joint award to four South African newspaper companies,” she added.

WAN announced the Young Reader Prize winners on International Literacy Day (September 8), a United Nations initiative to draw attention to the global problem of illiteracy. WAN contributed to the project by offering a free serialized story, and cartoons from some of the world’s best known cartoonists, for newspapers to run in connection with Literacy Day.

The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, defends and promotes press freedom and the professional and business interests of newspapers world-wide. It represents 18,000 newspapers.

“We have committed $25 million over five years to the Knight News Challenge because we believe in media innovation through experimentation,” says Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation president and CEO. “Each winning project is an experiment with the potential to transform how we practice journalism in the digital age.”

Do you have a big idea for informing and inspiring a geographic community using social media, Web 2.0 tools or OpenID? How about exchanging information via video, photos or text messaging? A way to integrate game theory with web browsing to support local community engagement?

Winning entries must have three elements:

• use of a digital media
• delivery of news or information on a shared basis
• a geographically defined community

Entries must be open-source and share the software and knowledge created. Deadline for applications: November 1st.

Last year’s winners included the US newspaper Bakerfield Californian with its printcasting project. It will allow individuals to easily create ad-supported, customized publications with a mix of local news and information. The Knight Foundation awarded the newspaper with $837,000. 

To support applications this year, Knight has created a new incubator - the Garage – where prospective applicants can receive peer reviews and mentoring from screeners and awardees from previous years.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invests in journalism excellence worldwide and in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950, the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance quality journalism and freedom of expression. The foundation focuses on projects with the potential to create transformational change.