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FieldReport.com Celebrates Launch With $250,000 Grand Prize

SAN FRANCISCO, July 16 PRNewswire — As the state of the economy sends Americans scrambling to get creative in ways to pay their bills, today a new San Francisco startup, FieldReport.com, is launching the web's largest writing contest with a $250,000 grand prize for the best short true-life story.

FieldReport.com is a new online community where storytellers compete for cash prizes awarded by the site's membership. In addition to the grand prize to be awarded on December 1, 2008, writers compete for 20 monthly prizes in categories as diverse as Brush with Fame, Animal Beings, and 36 Hours. Teen writers vie for the annual TeenReport $25,000 scholarship award.

"Everyone has a story to tell, and anyone can win," says FieldReport's CEO, William Petty. "FieldReport brings its members together over the most entertaining and meaningful content imaginable — the true stories of their own lives."

Unlike American Idol and Dancing with the Stars, FieldReport has no professional judges. FieldReport's unique software system enables anyone to participate as writer, reviewer or both. FieldReport's patent-pending Objective Community Ranking Engine combines a blind review process with an innovative rating system — a significant departure from the simple voting systems used by other websites. "Our goal is to give every submission a fair shake by eliminating the popularity factor that skews rankings on other sites. You may have 15,000 Facebook friends, but that doesn't mean you deserve to win a FieldReport contest," says Petty.

One unpublished writer, Mary Brewster, a 54-year-old mail carrier from Portland, Oregon has already won a $20,000 grand prize and 18 other contestants won prizes of $1,000 to $2,000 in FieldReport's beta contest, which concluded July 1. Brewster's winning story, "Edna Has Not Left the Building," describes her relationships with the characters she got to know while delivering the mail. Other winners ranged from an Alaskan mom who wrote about her adopted son, to a professional journalist and best-selling author who wrote about her "not-so-funny" love life.

FieldReport was created by a group of San Franciscans who believe that, even within our new blogging culture, there are literally thousands of great writers who have yet to be discovered. FieldReport gives them a platform, while offering readers a great experience of true-life storytelling.

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SOURCE FieldReport.com

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