College Park, Md. – Calling all creative new media women. J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism is seeking to fund three women-led start-ups that will generate new ideas in the world of news and information and model a spirit of journalistic entrepreneurship.

Winners will be given $10,000 in funding to launch their ideas and blog about the process over the next year. Deadline for proposals is May 1, 2008.

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TechPresident.com, a data-rich, nonpartisan group blog that covers real-time, online activity of the 2008 presidential candidates – and chronicles online content from voters who will elect them, is this year’s $10,000 Grand Prize winner in the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism, given by the Merrill College’s J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism.

The site invites every-day people to help break campaign news and it tracks voter-generated videos on YouTube, candidate “friends” on MySpace and Facebook, blog mentions on Technorati, voter demands for appearances on Eventful, and voter-generated photos on Flickr.

“The site not only reports on, but encourages, citizens to participate more directly in the political process,” the panel of judges said. “It’s an amazing source of information from a non-traditional news outlet.” The site is published by the Personal Democracy Forum.

Winning a $2,000 First Prize is another non-traditional news organization, the Council on Foreign Relations. CFR.org’s rich media “Crisis Guides” present compelling, in-depth news about the world’s most pressing crisis zones. “This is an institution stepping up and honoring the best of journalism. It’s filling an absolutely articulated need,” the judges said.

Four other innovative efforts each won $1,000 awards. And, for the first time, the judges cited four more creative ideas with Honorable Mentions.

“This year’s winners gave the judges another way to think about innovations in journalism,” said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab, which administers the awards.

Read the full release

SALZBURG, Austria.— Justice Anthony Kennedy, considered by The Washington Post to be the U.S. Supreme Court’s “most important justice” for his swing role on the Court’s 5-4 decisions, will open the first Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change here with a speech to students, faculty and official guests on Sunday, July 29th.

The Salzburg Academy is a new initiative of the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism and the Salzburg Global Seminar, a non-profit think-tank based at the Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, Austria. The three-week program is designed to bring together top undergraduate and graduate students from around the world with a global faculty to study and live at the world-renowned Schloss, an historic center of the arts and scholarship and home to the Von Trapp family in The Sound of Music.

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Two writers for American Journalism Review, the national journalism magazine published by the Merrill College, each won the Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism from the National Press Club, the organization announced June 19.

AJR Managing Editor Rachel Smolkin and senior contributing writer Charles Layton swept the print category of the Rowse Awards, the second consecutive year AJR won all of the Rowse print category. Smolkin’s “Adapt or Die” took the single entry category. This is her third Rowse award in the last four years.

Layton won the “body of work” award for his work that appeared in the magazine. He also is a veteran Rowse winner for his work in AJR, including wins in 2005, 2004, 2003 and 2000.

Also honored was NPR’s David Folkenflik, who won the broadcast segment of the criticism category. The awards will be presented at a banquet on July 16 at the National Press Club. The full list of winners can be viewed here.

American Journalism Review, the national journalism magazine housed at the Merrill College, won a Mirror Award for Overall Excellence today in New York. The contest, sponsored by Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, honors “the best in media industry reporting.”

The Mirror Awards, launched this year, honor the reporters and editors who “hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit.” Honorees are recognized for “news judgment and command of craft in reporting, analysis and commentary on developments in the media industry and its role in our economy, culture and democracy.”

AJR Editor and Vice President Rem Rieder and Managing Editor Rachel Smolkin accepted the award during the ceremony hosted by Meredith Vieira at Manhattan’s W Hotel. Smolkin was also a finalist in the profile category for her article on Brian Tierney, the PR mogul who purchased the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2006.

Also winning awards were writers for the New York Times, New York Magazine and The Economist. All winners and finalists can be viewed here: http://mirrorawards.syr.edu/

A new study out from the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda measures just how candid media are about what they do and how they do it. ICMPA’s newest study looks at 25 of the world’s top news sites to see which ones correct their errors, are open about their journalistic standards, and welcome reader comments and criticism.

“News outlets call for transparency by others and are balking at transparency for themselves,’” noted researcher Susan D. Moeller, a journalism professor at the University of Maryland and the director of the ICMPA which conducted the study.  “The media are in the position of saying to the Enrons and Arthur Andersens out there, ‘Do as I say, not as I do.”

Which were the best?

* The Guardian
* The New York Times
* The Christian Science Monitor
* National Public Radio

Which were among the worst?

* Time magazine
* Al Jazeera
* CNN
* The Economist

The full study can be seen here: http://www.icmpa.umd.edu/pages/studies/transparency/main.html

The Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families announced the recipients of their Casey Journalism Awards today. Winners will receive a Casey Medal and $1,000 at a fall event in Washington, D.C. More than 700 journalists entered this year’s contest.

CJC is a nonprofit program of the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism and funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (which also funds the contest), the Freddie Mac Foundation and individual donors. Since 1993, CJC has been a trusted resource for thousands of journalists covering critical social issues.

The International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, a center of the Merill College, released a study today on the effectiveness of Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds to read about the latest and breaking news.

The study found that the RSS feeds provided by most news outlets work very poorly for anyone who uses news as more than an entertainment medium or for more than an alert when a major event has occured.

Read the full study here.

The International Center for Media and the Public Agenda released a study today that correlates the coverage of Pakistan to the confusion in the “War on Terror” constructed by the White House. Dr. Susan Moeller, an associate professor of the Merrill College and the School of Public Policy, was the primary author of the study. The study found journalists often referenced all terrorism as a single bloc, perpetrated the myth that all madrassas are breading grounds for terrorism and the defined a “good Muslim.”

Read the full study here.

J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism announced today the results of the New Voices contest.

Ten new ideas for amplifying community news will receive $12,000 grants to launch news sites for under-covered communities, embed TV reporters in neighborhoods, network regional radio programs, and map the local impact of climate change.

Read the full release here.