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 May 1, 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 reward news and information ideas that significantly enhance opportunities for digital engagement. The awards honor novel efforts that actively involve people in public issues, supply entry points that invite their participation, sit their imagination, and meet their information needs in creative ways.

Honored are pioneering approaches to news and information that:

  • Spark widespread audience engagement.
  • Encourage new forms of information sharing.
  • Spur non-traditional interactions that have an impact on a community.
  • Foster animated two-way conversations between audiences and news providers.
  • Create new ways of imparting useful information.
  • Employ new definitions of news.

Entries could consist of such things as networked journalism projects, new social networking ideas, innovative citizen media initiatives, news games, creative use of mobile devices, data mining ideas, new online applications, augmented reality experiences, other advances in interactive and participatory journalism or out-of-the-box thinking.

Entries may also employ 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 awarded are:

  • A $10,000 Grand Prize.
  • $6,000 in Special Distinction Awards to be awarded at the judges’ discretion.

Special consideration this year for:

  • Unique digital engagement efforts
  • Novel citizen media ideas
  • Wild card ideas that may not be fully developed but deserve a megaphone

Winners will be announced in the summer of 2010 and are expected to participate in a panel on September 14, 2010 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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