On Wednesday, J-Lab (the Institute for Interactive Journalism) announced the winner of this year’s Knight-Batten Innovation Award: Wired.com‘s Wikiscanner coverage “which helped readers investigate and expose ego-editing and corporate whitewashing of Wikipedia entries.”

PolitiFact.com, with its “Truth-o-Meter” for 2008 presidential campaign statements, and Ushahidi: Crowdsourcing Crisis Information, a site to report incidents of political violence from mobile devices, email, and the Web, won Special Distinction Awards.

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Yesterday, Patricia Martin of the Culture Scout Blog posted about teens and the Knight Future of the First Amendment survey and research.

“It seems that when First Amendment rights are made relevant through self-expressive technologies, kids grasp it. It makes the case for why information privacy needs to become part of the First Amendment freedoms.”

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At the 2008 Online News Association Conference (follow the conference Twitter updates) that continues until Saturday, sessions and pre-conference workshops on media included a workshop on news games; Kurt Greenbaum of STL Social Media Guy blogged about how journalists are embracing news games. The Knight News Challenge winner Gotham Gazette is mentioned.

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And Heidi Williamson, who helps promote the Knight News Challenge (the $5 million yearly contest to fund innovative digital news delivery), has posted a new Seesmic video “What are the obstacles for innovation?” More than two dozen video responses have been posted, and you can join the discussion with your response here.