Awards are cool. Awards with cash: even cooler.

Global Voices is a finalist for a very cool journalism award – the 2006 Knight-Batten Awards for innovation in journalism. We’re in very good company, recognized alongside the Transparent Newsroom in Spokane, WA; the Washington Post’s US Congress Votes database, and other cool efforts. We appear to be the main internationally-focused entry – several of the others are focusing on local journalism, which is one of the venues in which participatory journalism has been most succesful.

On September 18th, we’ll find out whether we win the main prize – $10,000 – or one of the runner-up prizes – $1,000 each. In either case, we’ll use the money to bring more people to our annual meeting, this year held in Delhi in mid-December.

Thanks for recognizing our work, J-lab! And congrats to everyone involved with Global Voices!