'New York Times' Wins Knight-Batten Grand Prize

Posted Friday, July 24, 2009 12:00 am

By: E&P Staff Six digital innovations from The New York Times have earned it the $10,000 grand prize at the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism.

The winners were announced by the Knight Foundation and J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at American University's School of Communications Thursday. The winners will showcase their projects at a symposium and luncheon at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 17.

The six innovations that earned the Times the grand prize were: "Represent," a Facebook-style activity feed that allowed New York City residents to keep track of their elected officials; "Debate Analysis Tool," which allowed users to watch the 2008 Presidential debates and speeches on demand; "Living With Less," a series of audio and video profiles of people affected by the economic downturn; "Custom Times," a platform for personalized news reports available on print, the Web, mobile, and TV; "Document Reader," which allows documents to be posted online in an interface that allows for searching, bookmarking, comments and annotations; and "One Word," a tool that asked Times Web site users on Election Day "What one word describes your current state of mind?"

"This year?s winner shows that even the biggest, most prestigious news organizations can create just the kinds of small, nimble teams they need to successfully innovate in the digital age," Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab, said in a statement.

Other newspapers that were honored included the Star-News of Wilmington, N.C., which won a $1,000 Citizen Media award for "innovative and useful citizen participation." The Star-News won for its Web site "MyReporter.com" that allows readers to ask reporters questions directly.

The Christian Science Monitor shared a $1,000 Special Distinction Award with PBS' "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" for the Web site "Patchwork Nation" which uses demographic data to show how the nation's counties are dealing with political, economic and social changes.

Check out the full list of winners, as well as 21 other entries, here.

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'New York Times' Wins Knight-Batten Grand Prize

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