Four finalists have been chosen for the 2008 Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations have been determined.

The Knight-Batten Awards honor creative uses of new technologies to engage citizens in public issues and showcase compelling models for the future of news. They are administered by J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at American University's School of Communication. You can view the finalists as well as 24 other notable entries at www.j-lab.org.

This year's finalists are:

• Ushahidi: Crowdsourcing Crisis Information - Modeling urgent grassroots information-sharing in a time of crisis, Kenyan techies launched a site where bloggers and citizen journalists could text eyewitness accounts and map incidents of political violence in the wake of a corrupted presidential election.
• Wired.com's WikiScanner Coverage - Using Virgil Griffith's Wikipedia Scanner, WIRED magazine's blog engaged readers in crowdsourced exposés revealing PR spinmeisters' editing of Wikipedia entries not favorable to a company's reputation.
• JDLand.com - A one-woman citizen media project documents and visualizes real estate development, construction and community concerns in Washington D.C.'s rapidly changing Southeast neighborhood.
• PolitiFact.com - A collaboration between the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly features a rich database for the 2008 presidential election allowing users to sort news items by candidate, issue or ruling. The site's "Truth-o-Meter" rates the accuracy of campaign messages and statements; its "Pants on Fire" feature calls false statements to account.

Honorable mentions are:

• Hope: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica - A multimedia reporting project using poetry as a nontraditional entry way into documentary coverage of HIV/AIDS in Jamaica. Commissioned by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
• Iowa's Deadly Tornado - After a tornado ripped through Parkersburg, Iowa, The Des Moines Register created a house-by-house color-coded map embedded with first-person survivor accounts, surveillance and cell phone video, before and after photographs, and obituaries to chronicle the path of destruction.
• iReport.com - CNN's ground-breaking user-generated news site invites viewers to upload and rate stories; some are later used in the cable network's programs after being verified and expanded by CNN reporters.
• U.S. Congress MAPLight.org - A massive database that tracks campaign contributions and voting records of all members of Congress, illuminating patterns of money and influence on a daily basis.

For 2008, a national panel of judges chose winners for a $10,000 Grand Prize, two $2,000 Special Distinction Awards, and a $2,000 Citizen Media Award.

The top winners will be announced Thursday, Sept. 10, at a symposium and luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

For more information, visit J-Lab.org.