Upcoming Events:
Fri., July 25 at UNITY in Chicago
"Citizen Media: Entrepreneurial Ventures Plug Gaps in Local News"

Fri., August 8 at AEJMC in Chicago
"Networked Journalism: The Changing Face of News"

2008 New Voices Grantees Announced
Ten innovative citizen media projects have been selected as this year’s New Voices grant winners and will each receive up to $17,000 in start-up funding. One grantee will create a new model for regional news coverage in Ohio and Indiana. Others will start news and social networking sites for war veterans, families of prisoners, aviation buffs, immigrant and Native American communities and the eco-conscious. The winners were selected from a record 312 applicants.
  • Read the press release and see who won.
  • Visit the New Voices Web site.

New: Read the transcript of the 2008 Ruhl Lecture
by J-Lab Director Jan Schaffer
"Participatory Media: Challenges to the Conventions of Journalism," presented on May 8, 2008, at the Univ. of Oregon in Eugene.

New on KCNN: Top 10 Rules for Avoiding Legal Risk
If you're running a citizen media site or contributing to one, these 10 rules will help you avoid legal piftalls. Games, exercises and video advice from Harvard Berkman Center experts and Media Law Resource Center attorneys. Produced by Geanne Rosenberg, associate professor at CUNY's Graduate School of Journalism and Baruch College.

$10,000 Grand Prize Winner:
techPresident.com
Personal Democracy Forum

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.

$2,000 First Prize:
CFR.org Crisis Guides
Council on Foreign Relations

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.

$1,000 Wild Card Award:
Second Life Virtual News Bureau
Reuters

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.

$1,000 Citizen Media Award:
The Forum
Philbrick James Forum

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.

$1,000 Special Distinction Award:
MyTeam High School Sports Site
OrlandoSentinel.com

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.

$1,000 Special Distinction Award:
onBeing
washingtonpost.com

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.

See the press release announcing the winners.

Also see:
• 2007 Notable Entries
• 2006 Winners
• 2006 Notable Entries