Knight-Batten Awards for Journalism

Knight-Batten has announced its awards for innovations in journalism. This year the $10,000 Grand Prize winner is TechPresident.com, a data-rich, nonpartisan group blog that covers realtime, online activity of the 2008 presidential candidates and archives online content from voters who will elect them.

TechPresident.com invites everyday people to help break campaign news and tracks voter-generated videos on YouTube, candidate 'friends' on MySpace and Facebook, blog mentions on Technorati, voter demands for appearances on Eventful, and voter-generated photos on Flickr.

"The site not only reports but also encourages citizens to participate more directly in the political process," said the panel of judges. "It’s an amazing source of information from a non-traditional news outlet." The site is published by the Personal Democracy Forum.

The $2,000 First Prize was won by the Council on Foreign Relations (CRF.org). CFR.org’s 'Crisis Guides' present compelling, in-depth news about the world's crisis zones. "This is an institution stepping up and honouring the best of journalism. It’s filling an absolutely articulated need," the judges said.

"This year’s winners gave the judges another way to think about innovations in journalism," said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab, which administers the awards.

The $1,000 Wild Card Award was won by Reuters' Second Life Virtual News Bureau. This virtual news bureau in the online 3D world applies Reuters’ journalistic techniques to social networking, e-commerce and user-generated content for more than 7 million users. "It’s a place for the audience that newspapers don’t have to gather," the judges said.

The winners were selected from 133 entries submitted by print, television and online news organizations, and educational and non-profit institutions.

The Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism honour the late James K. Batten, former CEO of Knight Ridder newspapers and a pioneer in exploring ways journalism could better connect with audiences. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation invests in journalism excellence worldwide and in the vitality of 26 U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers.

Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $300 million to advance quality journalism and freedom of expression.