Over 120 journalists from all over the world applied for this year’s prizes. Thank you for all the fantastic applications.The jury, including hostwriter ambassadors and board, had a hard time deciding. It is with great pride and pleasure that we can present the two winning teams of this year’s Pitch Prize.

Pitch Prize (1,000 Euros)

The Hostwriter Pitch Prize is awarded to a team of journalists with an excellent story idea yet to be realised with the help of Hostwriter.

We are very happy with our winners and look forward to seeing these stories come to live.

Deep Breath

by Jakub Górnicki, Magdalena Chodownik and others

#DEEPBREATH – A global project about the effects of living in air polluted environments. It combines social media events, based on real time reporting and is followed by the release of an interactive reportage.The project stems from cross-border collaborations between Afghanistan, China, Egypt, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal and Poland.

The first part of the story has already been published, you can check it out here. With the help of the Hostwriter Pitch Prize the story will go even further.

“We want to add three more parts of the story. One from Africa, one from North America and one more from South America. This will make then the story complete and ‘fully global’. Reporters will be found through the Hostwriter platform.

Global Squeeze 

by Daniel Bates, Daylin Paul, Linus Unah, Wacera Ngunjiri, and Purple Romero 

#GlobalGentrification – A series of reports comparing how people are successfully fighting back against gentrification in five cities: New York, Johannesburg, Lagos, Nairobi and Manila.The goal of this project is having accounts about gentrification from nations where arguments and challenges posed by gentrification are different to what we see in more developed countries.

The project was initiated through Hostwriter. All participants first connected through the platform.

The series was published at City Limits in May 2018. Read all the articles here.

“Stories about gentrification from places like London or Berlin are quite common but we are excited to have accounts from places, which do not get so much attention.”