The French Albert Londres Journalism Prize will be awarded on October 25th in Beirut.

Arabian Sea Newspaper - Special

Arab Sea - Follow-ups The Albert Londres Prize, which recognizes the best written, audio, or visual reports in French during the year, will be awarded on October 25 in Beirut, organizers announced yesterday, Wednesday. The Lebanese capital was scheduled to host the deliberations for selecting this most prestigious prize in French journalism last year, but Israeli raids on several areas in Lebanon forced the jury to move it to Paris. Albert Londres wrote in November 1919, "In the beginning, there is Beirut, Beirut, a happy city," according to a statement from the organizers. The statement added, "But history decided otherwise. When the journalist returned to the region ten years later, the words massacres and assassinations became a common feature in his writings. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was claiming its first victims." The statement continued, "Nearly a hundred years later, the tragedy remains immense. Journalistic coverage is a vital issue despite the bombs and walls. The Albert Londres Prize had to address this. The essence of journalistic coverage, in short." Last year, Le Monde journalist Lorraine de Foucher won the Albert Londres Prize in the written press category for her reports and investigations into the rapes of Mazan and the rape of migrant women and victims of the pornography industry. The prize in the audio-visual arts category was also awarded to Antoine Fidèle and Germain Basile for their film "Philippines: Little Claws of Gold" (Arte channel), while the prize for best book was awarded to Martin Untersinger for "Spying, Lying, Destroying" (Grasset), an investigation into internet attacks. The prize was first awarded in 1933 in tribute to the French journalist Albert Londres (1884-1932), who is considered the pioneer of modern major reportage writing. The cash prize awarded to each winner is five thousand euros, and the winners must be under the age of forty-one.