The Knight-Batten Awards
for Innovations in Journalism

About the Awards…

Deadline for Entries: Tuesday, June 11, 2010

To Qualify for the Knight-Batten Awards

Entries must consist of journalism content created by a news-producing initiative. Individuals must have been affiliated with such initiatives at the time of publication to enter. The contest is open to all news efforts originating between June 9, 2009, and June 11, 2010.

The Future…

Nearly 20 years ago, James K. Batten, the respected chairman and CEO of Knight Ridder, urged journalists to adapt for the future and to “invent new ways to make the public’s business rivetingly interesting—and much more difficult to ignore.”

“We need a fresh journalistic mindset rooted in our past,” he said in 1989, “but shrewdly and tough-mindedly in touch with the realities awaiting us.”

Now, new technologies present journalists with fresh challenges—and new opportunities. “We should figure out how to turn the Web on its head, so it allows us to connect not the virtual, but the geographic communities that we still live in,” said Alberto Ibarguen, former publisher of the Miami Herald and now president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

To honor new visions for the future of journalism, the Knight Foundation has created the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism. This $16,000 awards program spotlights emerging models of journalism that most creatively use new information ideas and technologies to engage and educate people about important public issues in compelling new ways.

The Knight-Batten Awards are administered by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at the the American University School of Communication.

The Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism are the successor to the Batten Awards for Excellence in Civic Journalism, which were funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts from 1995 through 2002 and rewarded innovative journalism that helped to engage people in community life.

J-Lab maintains responsibility for the Knight-Batten Awards’ impartiality and integrity. For further information, contact J-Lab at 202-885-8100 or e-mail .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

The Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism spotlight news and information providers who offer more than multimedia journalism. The awards honor novel efforts that seize and create opportunities to involve citizens in public issues and supply entry points that invite their participation or spark their imagination.

Honored are pioneering approaches to journalism that:

  • Encourage new forms of information sharing.
  • Spur non-traditional interactions that have an impact on community.
  • Enable new and better two-way conversations between audiences and news providers.
  • Foster new ways of imparting useful information.
  • Create new definitions of news.
  • Use new technologies to impart news in creative ways.

Entries could consist of such things as online news experiences, news games, mobile news ideas, citizen media, creative use of cell phones, Webcams, vlogging, podcasting, social networks, computer kiosks, new applications of software, content management systems and other advances in interactive or participatory journalism.

Entries may also demonstrate simple efforts that notably connect in new ways with a community.

Entries from all news producers are eligible. Encouraged are both top-down and bottom-up innovations, those driven by news creators and those driven by news consumers.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has funded a $16,000 awards program to honor the creative use of new technologies to engage people in important public issues and to showcase compelling models for the future of news.

Among the prizes to be awardeded are:

  • A $10,000 Grand Prize.
  • Up to $5,000 in Special Distinction Awards, including a Wild Card Award, to be given at the judges’ discretion.
  • A $1,000 Citizen Media Award.

What’s a Wild Card Award?
A Wild Card Award will be given at the judges’ discretion to an early idea that may not be fully developed or a good idea that deserves a megaphone alongside the top winners.

The Citizen Media Award honors impact and achievement in the emerging field of participatory news and user-generated content. It will be given to an exemplary effort that meets at least one of the following criteria:

  • Spotlights and positively impacts under-covered issues.
  • Builds innovative on-ramps for citizen participation and dialogue.
  • Pioneers new ideas for community media.

To Qualify for the Citizen Media Award
Entries must consist of local news, information or conversation projects to which non-professional journalists contribute content. The contest is open to all citizen media efforts originating between January 1, 2009, and June 11, 2010.

Winners will be announced in the summer of 2010 and are expected to participate in a fall 2010 panel at the Knight-Batten Awards Symposium and invited to help educate the profession about journalism innovations.

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J-Lab helps journalists and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life with projects on innovations in journalism, citizen media, news games, interactive stories, entrepreneurship, research, training, and publications

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