2007 Winners

techPresident.com

http://www.techpresident.com/

Personal Democracy Forum (New York, N.Y.)

$10,000 Grand Prize

“The site not only reports on, but encourages, citizens to participate more directly in the political process. It’s an amazing source of information from a non-traditional news outlet.”
—2007 Knight-Batten Judges

A data-rich group blog that is breaking investigative stories, collecting voter generated content, and charting the metrics of a net-centric presidential campaign—from tracking candidate video views on YouTube, the number of their “friends” on MySpace and Facebook, voter demands for appearances on Eventful, blog mentions on Technorati and voter-generated photos on Flickr.

CFR.org Crisis Guides

http://www.cfr.org/publication/

Council on Foreign Relations (New York, N.Y.)

$2,000 First Prize

“This is an institution stepping up and honoring the best of journalism. It’s filling an absolutely articulated need.”
—2007 Knight-Batten Judges

In-depth, interactive news and information guides to the world’s most pressing crisis zones that seek to operate according to the tenants of objective journalism within a think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, and seek to help make sense of complex issues beyond U.S. borders.

Second Life Virtual News Bureau

http://www.secondlife.reuters.com/

Reuters (New York, N.Y.)

$1,000 Wild Card

“It’s a place for the audience that newspapers don’t have to gather.”
—2007 Knight-Batten Judges

Reuters’ virtual news bureau in the online 3D world known as Second Life is engaging more than 7 million users in financial news, participatory interviews with top newsmakers, and virtual news delivery devices all anchored within the professionalism of its real world practice of journalism.

The Forum

http://www.forumhome.org/

Philbrick James Forum (Deerfield, N.H.)

$1,000 Citizen Media Award

“It’s a testament to their vision and grit that their community now thanks them for reporting the news.”
—2007 Knight-Batten Judges

An all-volunteer online newspaper for Deerfield, N.H., that in two years has become the major source of news for three rural communities. In a readership area of 7,000 homes, it has more than 200 bylined contributors and average 37 original articles per week, excluding obituaries, classifieds, letters to the editor and events listings.

MyTeam Varsity High School Sports Site

http://varsity.orlandosentinel.com/myteam

OrlandoSentinel.com (Orlando, Fla.)

$1,000 Special Distinction Award

“It’s a model for others that shows the newspaper’s commitment to serving its community.”
—2007 Knight-Batten Judges

The OrlandoSentinel.com’s highly participative high school sports zone shows the newspaper’s commitment to serving its community by offering every school a customized sports page and every parent a way to track an athlete. User-generated content supplies scores, schedules, announcements, photos and ways to compare high school statistics in Central Florida.

onBeing

http://washingtonpost.com/onbeing/

washingtonpost.com (Washington, D.C.)

$1,000 Special Distinction Award

“It’s different. It makes you cry. It’s a model for the future of news.”
—2007 Knight-Batten Judges

The washingtonpost.com’s engrossing video-portrait series, capturing the intimate, unexpected stories that citizen narrators share with an invisible journalist, who distills the epiphanies of commonalities among her diverse subjects. Each video can be viewed, downloaded, e-mailed, sent by cell phone or commented upon.

User-generated Content 2.0: Reader-driven investigative Journalism

http://www.news-press.net/data/

The News-Press/news-press.com (Ft. Myers, Fla.)

“This is a classic case that will go down in journalism history of how to bring investigative journalism to the public.”“
—2007 Knight-Batten Judges

Fort Myers News-Press offers its crowdsourcing citizen participation program, which has broken several stories, and its newer Team Watchdog program that brings together 20 readers with expertise in finance, accounting,, criminal justice and other subjects to help with both daily and blockbuster watchdog reporting.
Its biggest crowdsourcing project on local utilities drew 6,577 user posts.

Great Lakes Wiki

http://www.greatlakeswiki.org/

Michigan State University (East Lansing, Mich.)

“The result is one interconnected encyclopedia of public knowledge about the region.”
—2007 Knight-Batten Judges

A project of Michigan State’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism, Great Lakes Wiki is a site that enables citizens of the wide expanse of the Great Lakes region to share information and stories in a multimedia environment.

New Assignment.net/Assignment Zero

http://www.newassignment.net/

Wired News/New Assignment.net (San Francisco, Calf.)

“It pushed outside the box in terms of service to the field.”
—2007 Knight-Batten Judges

An intriguing open-source experiment by NewAssignment.net and Wired News to harness the collective wisdom and expertise of members of the public under the guidance of professional journalists in reporting and writing stories.

Collected Entries: Lake Tahoe Explorations, Nevada Matters, Our Tahoe

Reynolds School of Journalism, University of Nevada-Reno (Reno, Nev.)

“This is a school that is preparing students for a future anchored in the belief that journalism and democracy are deeply related.”
—2007 Knight-Batten Judges

Student-built sites providing multiple non-linear stories and games to explore the area and community of Tahoe. An effort to provide an opportunity for readers to establish a sense of place and community.

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