Are you using new technologies on public issues?

The application deadline for the Knight-Batten award (given by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism) is next Wednesday, June 11th.

There is a $10,000 grand prize, up to $5,000 in special distinction awards (including a wild card award), a $1,000 citizen media award.

The Knight-Batten awards are given for: online news experiences, news games, mobile news ideas, citizen media, creative use of cell phones, Webcams, vlogging, podcasting, social networks, computer kiosks, new applications of software, content management systems and other advances in interactive or participatory journalism.

Last year’s winners included techPresident.com, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR.org) crisis guides, the Reuters Second Life Virtual News bureau, and the Washington Post’s citizen narration series On Being.

From the J-Lab site:

Honored are pioneering approaches to journalism that:

* Encourage new forms of information sharing. * Spur non-traditional interactions that have an impact on community. * Enable new and better two-way conversations between audiences and news providers. * Foster new ways of imparting useful information. * Create new definitions of news.

Entries from all news producers are eligible. Encouraged are both top-down and bottom-up innovations, those driven by news creators and those driven by news consumers.

The online application is here. Winners will be announced in the summer of 2008.

E-mail news {at} j-lab {dot} org with questions.