TechPresident.com Wins $10,000 Grand Prize in 2007 Knight-Batten Awards
TechPresident.com, a data-rich, nonpartisan group blog that covers real-time, online activity of the 2008 presidential candidates – and chronicles online content from voters who will elect them, is this year's $10,000 Grand Prize winner in the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism.
The site invites every-day people to help break campaign news and it tracks voter-generated videos on YouTube, candidate "friends" on MySpace and Facebook, blog mentions on Technorati, voter demands for appearances on Eventful, and voter-generated photos on Flickr.
"The site not only reports on, but encourages, citizens to participate more directly in the political process," the panel of judges said. "It's an amazing source of information from a non-traditional news outlet." The site is published by the Personal Democracy Forum.
Winning a $2,000 First Prize is another non-traditional news organization, the Council on Foreign Relations. CFR.org's rich media "Crisis Guides" present compelling, in-depth news about the world's most pressing crisis zones. "This is an institution stepping up and honoring the best of journalism. It's filling an absolutely articulated need," the judges said.
Four other innovative efforts each won $1,000 awards. And, for the first time, the judges cited four more creative ideas with Honorable Mentions.
Winning $1,000 Awards are:
Wild Card Award: Reuters Second Life Virtual News Bureau. This virtual news bureau in the online 3D world known as Second Life applies Reuters' journalistic techniques to social networking, e-commerce and user-generated content for more than 7 million users. "It's a place for the audience that newspapers don’t have to gather," the judges said.
Citizen Media Award: The Forum, Deerfield, N.H. This online newspaper, created only two years ago by volunteers for a town that had no media, is now the major source of news for four rural communities. It has more than 200 bylined contributors and averages 37 original articles per week. "It's a testament to their vision and grit that their community now thanks them for reporting the news," the judges said.
Special Distinction Award: Varsity MyTeam High School Sports. OrlandoSentinel.com's highly participative high school sports zone offers every school a customized sports page and ways for users to upload statistics, photos and postings. "It's a model for others that shows the newspaper's commitment to serving its community," the judges said.
Special Distinction Award: onBeing. The washingtonpost.com's compelling video portrait series captures unexpected, intimate stories of ordinary citizens. "It's different. It makes you cry. It’s a model for the future of news," the judges said.
Because of this year's diversity and breadth of creative ideas, the judges for the first time cited four projects for Honorable Mention:
* The News-Press, Fort Myers, Fla. For its crowdsourcing and Team Watchdog initiatives that enlist readers and a team of 20 super-user experts in helping to investigate stories. "This is a classic case that will go down in journalism history of how to bring investigative journalism to the public," the judges said.
* GreatLakesWiki.org. This wiki allows citizens, scientists, activists, industry leaders, teachers and students to contribute and cross-link content about the culture, recreation, commerce and the environment of the Great Lakes region. "The result is one interconnected encyclopedia of public knowledge about the region," the judges said.
* NewAssignment.net/Assignment Zero. This open-source experiment by NewAssignment.net and Wired News sought to harness the collective expertise of members of the public under the guidance of professional journalists. "It pushed outside the box in terms of service to the field," the judges said.
* Reynolds School of Journalism, University of Nevada-Reno. For the collected work of students in reinventing journalism so that it accommodates public deliberation, shared values, solutions, interactive exercises and action pledges. "This is a school that is preparing students for a future anchored in the belief that journalism and democracy are deeply related," the judges said. See Lake Tahoe Explorations, Nevada Matters and Our Tahoe.
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