NewsMixer Named a Notable Entry in 2009 Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation

The fall 2008 Interactive Innovation Project "NewsMixer" was recognized as a "notable entry" in the 2009 Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation. This is the second consecutive year that a Medill Interactive Innovation project has been named a "notable entry" in this awards program. Medill’s 2008 spring New Media Publishing Project dealing with locative journalism was considered one of 24 “notable entries” of more than 100 entries submitted.

NewsMixer was created by six Medill master's students who set out to solve two challenging problems: Improving conversations around news, and building news engagement among young adults.  Their solution was NewsMixer, an interactive site that melds three "commenting structures" -- question and answer, short-format "quips," and letters to the editor -- into a site that leverages users' social networks by using the newly released Facebook Connect system.

The Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism spotlight news and information providers who offer more than multimedia journalism. The awards honor novel efforts that seize and create opportunities to involve citizens in public issues and supply entry points that invite their participation or spark their imagination.

The NewsMixer students are: Andrea Nitzke, Joshua Pollock, Stuart Tiffen, Kayla Webley and "programmer-journalists" Brian Boyer and Ryan Mark. Boyer and Mark, who had careers in computer programming before coming to Medill, enrolled at the school through a "programmer-journalist" scholarship program funded by the Knight News Challenge.

News Mixer was also this year’s first place winner in the “Best of the Web” contest sponsored by the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication (AEJMC).

The Knight-Batten awards program is a product of J-Lab, a center of American University's School of Communcation in Washington, D.C. with support form The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation which promotes journalism excellence worldwide and invests in the vitality of the U.S. communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Since 1950 the foundation has granted more than $400 million to advance journalism quality and freedom of expression. Knight Foundation focuses on ideas and projects that create transformational change. To learn more, visit http://www.knightfoundation.org.

J-Lab helps news organizations and citizens use digital technologies to develop new ways for people to participate in public life. It also administers the Knight Citizen News Network, the New Voices community media grant program (www.j-newvoices.org), and the McCormick New Media Women Entrepreneurs initiative.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation has funded a $16,000 awards program to honor the creative use of new technologies to engage people in important public issues and to showcase compelling models for the future of news.