Posted By HR Partnership on July 24, 2009

Transforming journalism today. Reinventing it for tomorrow.

The Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism honor creative uses of new technologies to engage citizens in public issues and showcase compelling models for the future of news.

A Special Distinction Award was won by Hampton Roads SmartRegion.org‘s national affiliate, Patchwork Nation, a Web site shared by the Christian Science Monitor and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer that uses reams of demographic data to track how the nation’s 3,100-plus counties are dealing with an era of dramatic changes in politics, culture and the economy.

The awards are funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation which promotes journalism excellence worldwide, focusing on ideas and projects that create transformational change. J-Lab, the organization that administers the awards, helps news organizations and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life. J-Lab is a center of the American University’s School of Communication, a laboratory for professional education, communication research and innovative production in the fields of journalism, film and media arts and public communication, working across media platforms and with a focus on public affairs and public service.

The New York Times swept top honors in the Knight-Batten Awards with six striking entries that netted the $10,000 Grand Prize for a dynamic body of work in the past year.

“This year’s winner shows that even the biggest, most prestigious news organizations can create just the kinds of small, nimble teams they need to successfully innovate in the digital age,” said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab.

A national panel of judges also chose winners for five $1,000 Special Distinction Awards, including one for Nonprofit Journalism, and a $1,000 Citizen Media Award.

“The Knight-Batten Award honors excellent, innovative journalism, news and information ¬– not just excellent journalism,” said Gary Kebbel, Journalism Program Director for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The Times’ body-of-work award honors initiatives created in the newsroom and the technology department:

• Represent, which helps city residents keep tabs on their elected officials, culling information from dozens of sources into a Facebook-style activity feed;
• Document Reader, which allows documents to be posted online in a clean interface that allows searching, bookmarking, comments and annotations;
• Custom Times, a prototype for personalized Times news reports that seamlessly transition across print, Web, mobile, television and even the car;
• Debate Analysis Tool, a replicable tool that allowed users to watch the 2008 presidential debates and speeches on demand with a searchable transcript scrolling simultaneously alongside;
• Living with Less, engaging audio and video portraits of peoples’ lives that have been upended by the recession;
• One Word, a replicable tool that asked users on Election Day to share “What One Word Describes Your Current State of Mind?”

Others winning $1,000 Special Distinction Awards are:

• Printcasting, a Web site that allows people to create niche magazines for their communities from their own blog posts and from other blogs and publications that have registered on the site. Advertisers can create their own ads and target which magazines to appear in. Revenues are shared.
• Apture, a powerful multimedia program that allows Web content creators to embed images, video, audio and screen grabs into articles so that the content pops up in a small window in the same screen, allowing users to get more information without opening new windows or tabs.
• Change Tracker, a Web application developed at ProPublica that monitors content changes on www.whitehouse.gov and that is being shared to allow other news organizations to monitor Web sites.
• Patchwork Nation (see above) 

Winning a $1,000 Citizen Media Award for innovative and useful citizen participation:

• MyReporter.com, an-easy-to use vehicle by the Star News in Wilmington, N.C., that lets people ask questions and get answers from reporters that are cataloged for future reference.

Winning a $1,000 Special Distinction Award for Nonprofit Journalism is The Center for Public Integrity for its innovative uses of digital tools to unpack complex topics as exemplified in:

• Broken Government, a searchable assessment of 120 executive branch failures of the Bush administration;
• Tobacco Underground: The Booming Global Trade in Smuggled Cigarettes, an exposé of the black market for tobacco by 17 journalists in 13 countries;
• Who’s Behind the Financial Meltdown? an interactive look at the nation’s top 25 sub-prime lenders and their Wall Street backers.

This year’s winners were selected from 92 entries. The winners will showcase their projects at a September 17 symposium and awards luncheon at the Newseum. The event is free, but space is limited and pre-registration is required; e-mail news@j-lab.org to register. In addition to the winners you can view 21 other notable entries.

For more information about Patchwork Nation, email Anna Shoup, Local/National Editor, Online NewsHour and/or follow The NewsHour on Twitter.  

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