Awards Rules

Eligibility

All entries must have been published, posted or broadcast in an independent news outlet for the first time in 2023, with the following exceptions:

EWA accepts series in which some of the articles were published during the 2022–2023 school year. However, a majority of the series’ pieces must have run in 2023.
One note of caution: Stories published or broadcast in 2022 that were recognized in last year’s EWA Awards are ineligible for consideration in this year’s awards.
Freelancers are eligible to apply.

Entrant qualifications

Entries may not include items created by non-journalists. (See EWA Bylaws, Article II, Section 1.1, to clarify entrants’ eligibility to be considered journalists). All entrants must have met these eligibility requirements at the time the entry was produced. Officers and members of the Board of Directors of the Education Writers Association may enter but are not eligible to win cash awards in the competition.

Deadlines

All entries must be completed by Jan. 9, 2024 at 6 p.m. Eastern. Please also note that we have a two-tiered fee structure, not including student members who pay a separate flat fee.

Early Bird Discount: $50 for members and $100 for nonmembers to enter the awards until Dec. 15, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. (Membership is free.)
Regular Price: $75 for members and $125 for nonmembers to enter the awards until Jan. 9, 2024 at 6 p.m. Eastern.
Student members pay $25 for the student journalism category.

Other Rules

Newsroom size

For beat reporting, features, investigative/public service reporting and news reporting, you must enter in the newsroom size division of under 60 FTE or 60 or more FTE. To calculate your newsroom size, count the number of all editorial “full-time equivalent” employees – including reporters, editors, designers, online producers, and multimedia content producers, such as photographers, data analysts and videographers – during the time period the entered work was produced. (Two half-time editors would count as one FTE.) For additional specifics, check out our Awards FAQs.

Cover letter

Each entry must include a cover letter that describes the entry’s development and impact, if any. Limit the cover letter to a single page.

Logins and passwords

If a password is needed to access the content, supply the necessary details in the cover letter or upload PDFs of your work. For the collaborations category, EWA requests submission letters list all outlets that participated in the production and/or publication of the entry.

Entry formats

Judges will disqualify any entry that does not adhere to the rules or that is submitted in a form that is difficult to read, listen to or view (broken links, PDFs in which the font is too small, a password for the paywall that doesn’t work, etc.).

Other entry criteria

If you are submitting print or digital-text stories, submit no more than three in collaborations, data reporting and visualization, features, investigative/public service, and news.

Education-only news outlets

Independent education-only news outlets must submit to the education-only subcategory in beat reporting and investigative/public service reporting instead of the FTE categories.

Broadcast subcategories

Features and news categories now offer broadcast subcategories.

Journalists for radio and television news outlets should submit to those subcategories rather than FTE subcategories.

Here are the requirements:

Combine up to 30 minutes of audio or video per entry. The entries can be edited for length.
Video entrants should upload the work to an online video site and submit the URL (preferred), or upload a video file to the awards site. [50 MB file limit]
All video files must be one of the following formats: .wmv, .mov, .mpeg or .mp4.
Audio entries must be in the form of a URL (preferred), MP3 or WAV

Podcast

Submit three education-related segments of a serialized podcast or stand-alone series centered on an education topic to give judges an understanding of what the podcast covered and examples of its creative use of audio, sound and interviews. One hour of audio may be submitted.

Visual Storytelling

Entries should contain no more than one hour of video or up to 10 photographs.

Content in other languages

Entries not originally published or broadcast in English should include English subtitles or an English translation.

Repeat content

Any item submitted in one category may NOT be submitted in a second category, except as part of a beat reporting entry and/or an entry for the Eddie Prize. A beat entry cannot include more than one story from another individual category entry. For instance, two of three stories entered into the news category cannot be submitted to beat.

Fees

Entries must be paid in full by 6 p.m. Eastern on Jan. 9, 2024 to be judged. Fees for members are $50 per entry until Dec. 15 at 11:59 p.m., and then $75 Dec. 16, 2023 to Jan. 9, 2023. For nonmembers, fees are $100 per entry until Dec. 15. 2023, and then $125 from Dec.16, 2023 to Jan. 9, 2023. Pay online when submitting.

Category classification

EWA staff or awards judges may move an entry from one category to another if they determine it is wrongly classified. Our Category page has more specifics.

Judging

Judges reserve the right to forgo awarding prizes in categories they determine have no suitable winners.

Promotion

When you enter any work into EWA’s National Awards for Education Reporting, you are granting us the right to publish excerpts of and promote what you submit — photos, text, videos, etc. — on EWA’s website and through our social media platforms. We do this to highlight the caliber and importance of entries, finalists and winners.