Real estate reporting fellowship offered

The National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE) is accepting applications from real estate journalists, including editors, freelance writers and staff reporters, for the $5,000 NAREE Bivins Fellowship program. Grants are available to mid-career journalists to enhance their ability to cover real estate, and residential or commercial building topics.

Sept. 15, 2006 is the deadline to postmark your application for the NAREE Bivins Fellowship. Grant awards will be announced in November at the NAREE Summit Banquet in New Orleans, La., during the National Association of Realtors convention.

Journalists who are not currently members of NAREE are welcomed and encouraged to apply. There is no charge for NAREE active members to enter. Nonmembers pay a fee of $75, which can be applied to membership dues. Applications are available on http://www.naree.org.

Fellowship guidelines allow grants to fund independent study, the pursuit of special research projects, or registration at skill-building workshops. Prior winners have studied green building, learned how to apply computer-assisted research to real estate journalism, and written book chapters on real estate topics.

NAREE has increased the fellowship to $5,000 from $3,500 to allow journalists pursue more ambitious projects.

One grant for the full $5,000 may be awarded to one applicant or several grants totaling $5,000 may be awarded to several applicants at the discretion of the judges.

For the past four years applications for the NAREE Bivins Fellowship have been judged by the faculty of Northwestern University under the direction of George Harmon, who directs the business writing program at the university’s Medill School of Journalism.

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