Transcript for
The 2003 James K. Batten Symposium & Awards
for Innovations in Journalism

Monday, September 15, 2003
National Press Club
Washington, D.C.

Awards Presentation

Jan Schaffer:  Presenting our awards today is chairman of our board of judges, Bryan Monroe, who knew Jim Batten and who led us through a pretty competitive judging process.  He is vice president of news for Knight-Ridder.  Thank you.

[Applause]

Bryan Monroe, Assistant Vice President/News, Knight Ridder:  Thank you, Jan, and thank everyone for coming.  Before we get started on the awards, I just want to reach out and say thank you to all the presenters and moderators.  And let's give them all a round of applause.

[Applause]

Bryan Monroe:  Jim Batten was someone very special to me and to many of our friends and colleagues at Knight-Ridder and throughout the country.  I remember I was--about, oh, fifteen years ago--working on a project in South Florida called "The 25-43 Project."  I was deputy director of that, and Jim was sort of our sponsor for the project.  For those who knew Jim, very calming Southern personality, but very intense when it came to quality journalism and innovation. Something Jim told us--we were looking at ways to make newspapers more appealing to younger readers, and the rules we got from Jim were: "Go out to the end of the tree limb.  Jump up and down.  If the limb doesn't break, go a little bit farther.  Jump up and down.  Still doesn't break?  Take one more step.  Jump up and down 'til it breaks, then take a step back."  And boy, that from a newspaper guy?  That was really refreshing.  And that's the spirit that, I think, this process and these awards capture, the spirit of taking chances, but in a journalist vein--storytelling, making that experience for the reader, for the viewer, for the listener one that's compelling.  And they come away from the process learning a little bit more.  So with that, we have the winners. 

There was an incredible list of entrants throughout the process, and it was very, very difficult to whittle them down.  Before we go into it, I want to again thank Jan and the team at J-Lab, as well as the other judges: Jody Brannon, executive producer at USA Today; Mark Hinojosa, associate manager at the Chicago Tribune for Electronic News; Mike McCurry, partner with Public Strategies Washington; Lee Rainie, executive director of Pew Internet and American Life Project; Chris Harvey, online bureau director and lecturer; and Dean Tom Kunkel from the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism in University of Maryland.  They were a great team to work with, and I learned a lot just by being in their presence.

Now, without further ado, here we go.  As you know, the five finalists that we had--in no particular order, but I will just read them: Minnesota Public Radio's "Budget Balancer" Project, the Chicago Tribune's "When Evil Struck America," MSNBC's "The Big Picture," The San Francisco Chronicle "Two Cents" project, and VillageSoup.com.  And we're going to start with our honorable mentions and work up to runners-up and then first place.  Again, the grand prize award is $10,000 and a nice, beautiful award.  The runners-up are each awarded $2,500.  And when I call your name, if you could come up and receive your award that would be great.

Our honorable mention: We have two honorable mentions.  Both engaged their audiences in fresh, new ways and celebrated news and local news, using groundbreaking techniques.  Our first honorable mention: VillageSoup.com.

[Applause]

Bryan Monroe:  Our second honorable mention:  The San Francisco Chronicle's "Two Cents" project.

[Applause]

Bryan Monroe:  Our runners-up: I need to check that.  There'll be two runners-up and then the grand prize.  Our two runners-up--Our first runner-up: Minnesota Public Radio.

[Applause]

Bryan Monroe:  Our next runner-up:  The Chicago Tribune.

[Applause]

Bryan Monroe:  And, finally, our grand prize winner:  The work was amazing, as you saw, and, again, what distinguished the top honor here was not just the quality of the idea, but the quality of the execution--MSNBC.com.

[Applause]

Bryan Monroe:  Thank you again, and to all of our participants and our winners, thank you for a wonderful process, and we're going to do this again next year.  I think, now, we're going to retire next door to lunch.