Kurt Schork

The goal of the Kurt Schork Memorial Fund and Awards recognizes and assists freelance journalists, local journalists and news fixers who make a critical contribution to international understanding but whose work is often overlooked. The awards include three cash prizes of $5,000 each to provide some financial support to help the winners continue reporting. Though local journalists in the developing world take extraordinary risks to expose corruption and injustice in their countries, they rarely earn enough money to support themselves and their families. Similarly, freelancers live from job to job, never knowing when the next assignment will come, where it may lead or how long it will last. The News Fixer Award, newly introduced in 2017, aims to recognise the rarely credited yet often at-risk individuals who typically act as the correspondent’s eyes and ears on the ground. It is the fixers’ local knowledge, as well as their network of official – and unofficial – contacts that helps to secure critical interviews and access to all important areas for the out-of-town correspondents. The prize was inspired by the freelance journalist, author and friend of Kurt Schork, Anna Husarska, and pays tribute to the vital role that these unsung heroes play in coverage from difficult, dangerous and hostile locations. With these awards, the Fund spotlights the plight and achievements of freelance journalists, local reporters and news fixers.

Kurt Erich Schork (January 24, 1947 – May 24, 2000) was an American reporter and war correspondent. He was killed in an ambush while on an assignment for Reuters in Sierra Leone together with cameraman Miguel Gil Moreno de Mora of Spain, who worked for Associated Press Television. Two other Reuters journalists, South African cameraman Mark Chisholm and Greek photographer Yannis Behrakis, were also injured in the attack.

Kurt Schork was born Jan 25, 1947 in Washington, D.C. He graduated from Jamestown College in 1969, and studied at Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar later that year—the same time as future United States President Bill Clinton. Schork worked as a property developer, a political adviser, and then chief of staff for the New York City Transit Authority before becoming a journalist.