Thursday, August 09, 2007

Volunteer, online 'paper' in New Hampshire gets Knight-Batten Award for innovation

An all-volunteer online newspaper in Deerfield, N.H., that "has become the major source of news for three rural communities" won one of this year's Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism, J-Lab, the Institute for Interactive Journalism, announced yesterday.

The Forum is two years old, getting a start-up grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's New Voices program, which J-Lab also administers. "In a readership area of 7,000 homes, it has more than 200 bylined contributors and averages 37 original articles per week, excluding obituaries, classifieds, letters to the editor and events listings," J-Lab said in its news release. To read it, click here.

The Forum was the only rural-related winner this year. Each of the six winners will get at least $1,000. A national panel of judges has chosen winners of a $10,000 grand prize and a $2,000 "first-place award." Four other entries among the total of 133 were given honorable mention. The top winners will be announced Sept. 17 at a symposium and luncheon, "Creativity Unleashed," at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

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