J-Lab announces Batten Awards finalists

J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at the University of Maryland has announced five finalists for the 2005 Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism. The awards honor creative and innovative methods for sharing information and involving the community in public issues.

The dominant themes in this year's entries were the "'increasing transparency, accessibility and democratization of news,'" according to the chairman of the Batten Awards Advisory Board Bryan Monroe. There was a wide range of ideas in the finalists' sites -- "'from a collaboration of former broadcast professionals from Europe to the transformation of a newsroom in North Carolina to the wild idea of a lone innovator in Chicago,'" Monroe said.

The Batten awards are sponsored by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in honor of a former Knight Ridder CEO, the late James K. Batten.

Links to finalists' sites and additional notable entries, along with information about the Sept. 12 Batten Symposium where the winners will be announced, are available at J-Lab.