Get Ready to Roll: YouTube Runs Inspirational Video Contest

Listen up amateur videographers 'cause here's your chance to do some good, build your portfolio and get your name out in the process.

YouTube is teaming up with none other than the Pulitzer Center to run a two-part journalism competition for amateur videographers. Five grand prize winners will each be awarded $10,000 travel fellowships and the chance to showcase their work. The competition, dubbed Project: Report, launched this week and will take place over the next three months. It consists of two rounds, each with a reporting "assignment" to be posted on YouTube.

But here's our favorite part: the first assignment doesn't involve war reporting, or telling more stoires about financial doom and gloom. Rather, it's to document a day in the life of a "compelling person the world should meet and showcase how that person is making a positive impact in his or her community." The idea is to tell stories that might not otherwise be told and to share them with the world. Sound familiar? (That's what we aim to do at Tonic!)

In each of the two rounds, contestants will have a reporting assignment to complete. The requirements for each round will vary, but for starters, Round 1, as we mentioned is to profile (on video) a compelling person doing good in the community in three minutes or less. The assignment is due Feb. 28, 2010 and is only open to non-professional journalists (including students of all disciplines). You have to be a U.S. resident to participate. Even if you do not participate in or advance past Round 1, you can till complete the assignment for Round 2.

After the first round, 10 finalists will be chosen by a panel of judges at the Pulitzer Center (are you nervous yet?) Each finalist will receive a Sony VAIO notebook and a Sony HD video camera (Sony is sponsoring the competition) and proceed to the second and final round, where they will compete for five $10,000 travel fellowships to work with the Pulitzer Center on an international reporting project.

All five winners will then receive a trip to Washington, D.C. for a public screening of their work and the chance to participate in a special workshop with Pulitzer Center journalists and featured placement of their piece on the YouTube homepage for a day (for some perspective on what that exposure means: YouTube surpassed 100 million U.S. viewers in March of '09, according to comScore.)

This is the second iteration of Project: Report. Last year, Arturo Perez, Jr. won and traveled to Jerusalem to work with the Pulitzer Center on a youth-oriented film about Israeli and Palestinian relations.

For more information, check out the Project: Report blog, watch the video below and get your cameras ready! We'll be watching to see what great, inspiring stories you come up with, so get out there!

Photo courtesy of FaceMePLS via Flickr.