How to Enter

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Noteworthy changes in the competition's eligibility rules

• For the 2025 Cronkite Awards, submitted material must have first been available to the public at some point between Election Day, November 5, 2024, and May 16, 2025—covering the first 100th days of the Trump Administration. (Note: the eligibility period has been extended beyond April 30.)  Entries are due by June 15, 2025 (also extended).
• To reflect the transformation of media usage since the inception of the Awards in 2001, the prize is now named the Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in Political Journalism on Television and Digital Media. Video podcasts and video social media such as YouTube and Twitch are now eligible, as is digital-original video news.
• Comedy, satire and parody are also eligible. So are commentary and analysis. Traditional journalistic values, including accuracy, are expected of winning submissions; because those standards may vary by context, judges have the discretion to apply them to individual entries.

Eligibility

Entries can come from:

• individual journalists
• individual programs
• news specials
• local for-profit stations or local public stations, in markets of any size
• station ownership groups
• national networks:
  • for-profit or public
  • broadcast, cable or streaming

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Entries may also be:

• online-original video journalism

• video podcasts and video social media (such as YouTube and Twitch)
• comedy, satire, or parody
• commentary or analysis

An eligible entry must have first been available to the public between Election Day, November 5, 2024 and May 16, 2025​

Selection Process

There is a fee of $75 per entry.

Entrants should submit a reel of no more than 30 minutes in length. Compilations, bumpers or other interstitial material produced for the entry reel are acceptable but not required. If a reel longer than 30 minutes is submitted, it is possible that only the first 30 minutes will be screened.
 
The entry form accompanying the reel requests a brief narrative describing the reel’s content; the context it is excerpted from; its reception and impact, if relevant; and other information you may wish to describe, like production details, collateral material and cross-platform content.

Entries will be reviewed and scored by a panel of screeners — USC Annenberg faculty, alumni and affiliates with extensive journalism experience.

Based on screener recommendations, a shortlist of entrants will be reviewed by a jury of USC Annenberg faculty, alumni and affiliates. The number and categories of prizes will be determined by the judges, based on the entries submitted and shortlisted.

Cronkite Awards Timeline

Eligible coverage: November 5, 2024 - May 16, 2025
Entry deadline: June 15, 2025
Winners announced: Summer 2025

Fact-Checking Timeline

Eligible coverage: January 1, 2023 - February 1, 2025
Entry deadline: May 30, 2025
Winners announced: Summer 2025

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The 2025 Brooks Jackson Prize for Fact-Checking 
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The 2025 Brooks Jackson Prize for Fact-Checking, reviewed by a separate jury at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, is presented in partnership with the Cronkite Awards. It is named in honor of the founding director of FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocate for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics. Eligible entries will demonstrate how fact-checking is not a one-off, but rather a beat, a recurring segment featured as fact-checking and institutionalized within the format of a program or news schedule of a station or network. Jackson Prize winner(s) may be local, national or both. 
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Awards will honor coverage that aired between January 1, 2023 and February 1, 2025. The deadline for submitting an entry is May 30, 2025.
If developing political circumstances warrant, the airdate for eligibility and the deadline for submission may be extended.