Although the "literature on a deadline" aesthetic of journalism is not hard-wired for nostalgia and hasn't often the leisure for back-patting, several individuals, stories, and websites stand out for their achievements in the field and their contributions to our collective knowledge and engagement this year. Read on for the list of honorees and our assessment of their contributions.

Journo/reader collaboration site Publish 2, which focuses on news curation, received $5,000 as the first Gannett Foundation Award winner for technical innovation in the service of digital journalism. The Gannett Company, an undisputed titan of news media, aims to use foundation funds to ensure the future of journalism and contribute to other charitable causes.

The Gotham Gazette, an NYC-focused civic resource, was recognized with a Creative Use Award in 2004. This year, the outlet was given an award for its contributions to the microsite category. Well known for its hyperlocal focus, it's essentially the Batman of the Internet, an arm of the Citizens Union Foundation of the City of New York, which itself is an NYC-focused government watchdog group.

In a coup of navel-gazing, the organization awarded a project entirely devoted to investigating the death of a journalist. The Chauncey Bailey Project was an investigation by more than 24 journalists into the murder of an Oakland Post reporter. The project took home two awards, receiving $5,000 for the Knight Award for Public Service and OJA's award for investigative journalism in the small site category.

Also of interest is the Guantanamo: Beyond the Law endeavor. Spearheaded by McClatchy journalists Tom Lasseter and Matt Schofield, the project was honored by ONA for investigative journalism for a large site.

As large sites of general excellence, ProPublica, the Las Vegas Sun, and The New York Times were also honored.

Of course, we can't wait to hear your personal picks. We were disappointed that journo-source matchmaker site HARO was left out. What was your favorite news site this year, and why?

Fortunately, we found some beautiful and compelling content buried beneath the surface: artist tag clouds. While they might not be entirely accurate, they're still an interesting - and artistic - visualization of the musician's work.

If you're interested in a little more interaction, you can follow TheGRAMMYs on Twitter where they're retweeting Grammy mentions and sharing trivia. Or you can always tune in to see what the Twitter crowd is saying about the event.

Given its predilection toward musicians, you'd expect MySpace to be a veritable treasure trove of Grammy info. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Apart from an official Grammy page and Katy Perry's call for videos to show during the CBS broadcast there's little beyond individual artists mentioning their nominations. Although something tells us the users Grammy and Grammys are getting irregularly high page views as of late.

Not to be outdone, Facebook is offering two Grammy-oriented areas, the official 51st Grammys page and the page for the Recording Academy.

Rolling Stone has ongoing Grammy coverage. If you're interested in their take, see their Grammy predictions or take your turn with prognostication and fill out your Grammy ballot. If you're into the new artists, the LA Times has a write up on the nominations for Best New Artist. Or, if you're interested in a more cutting-edge perspective, reading Spin's predictions might be more your speed.

For some history, Time has gathered videos of the Top 10 Grammy Moments. Or spend some time with a beautiful infographic detailing who the music industry has rewarded with Grammys throughout history.

Finally, if the awards themselves don't provide enough drama, you might want to dig into the accusations about song stealing. Currently, there's the ongoing Coldplay-Satriani saga and recent allegations of Bruce Springsteen stealing tunes from KISS. (Yes, you read that right.)

For many, the Grammys aren't half as interesting as other artists who receive far less recognition. So if you're interested in finding some new tunes, why not thumb through some of the music services ReadWriteWeb has reviewed recently? Check out our tips on music recommendation services or take a look at the 50 most blogged about albums from 2008.

Enjoy the show!

At a time when many companies are struggling to find funding for their ideas, these Facebook app developers have found themselves with $25,000 more to spend on development. It's all thanks to the Facebook fbFund, a grant program designed to "identify talent and seed innovation on the Facebook Platform."

The winners - you'll find descriptions of the 25 winning apps on the Facebook Developer blog - represent a good cross-section of the Facebook population. There are apps focused on imbibing, religion, app development, sports, games, and, of course, apps focused on college life.

Among the winners were:

• Tired of sending fake drinks? BarTab lets you send real drinks to a friend for $1 that are redeemable at participating establishments.
• Apps that ease development are always cool. Daikon helps users build Facebook apps without having to code.
• Bargain shopping goes high tech with Pongr, an app that provides on-the-fly price comparisons for nearby stores.

Getting Social with the Selection Process

The current recipients will be reduced to five honorees in December - and Facebook users will get the chance to help in the selection process:

"Around mid-November, we'll start soliciting our users to help us select the five finalists. Users will have the chance to try these applications, watch the videos and vote for their favorites. Final judging of round two will factor in user voting, as well as input from Facebook, Accel Partners and Founders Fund."

Those finalists will receive an additional $225,000 in funding, each, bringing the grand total to a quarter of a million dollars in funding for each of those lucky five apps. In addition to the grant, the fbFund recipients also receive mentorship from Facebook employees and marketing assistance.

At a time when funding is becoming scarce, it's nice to see creative developers and their applications getting some much-needed cash to help them realize their vision.

It will be interesting to see how this grant program - very much micro-funding compared to typical VC investments - furthers the development for the Facebook platform.

Over 45,000 votes have been cast for 100 startups in 20 award categories. The winners will remain a closely held secret until the night of the event - not even plying me with alcohol will work, although you are welcome to try! Voting is open until midnight PST, January 10.

The Herbst Theater has 916 seats, so we have just 450 general admission tickets in the balcony and dress circle to release for the event. Tickets are $40, and $10 from each ticket will be contributed to the American Heart Association, in honor of Marc Orchant (a tech blogger who passed away this year and who we all miss) and Om Malik (who suffered a heart attack over xmas, but he is ok now thank goodness). The balance of the tickets are reserved for the 100 finalist companies, press and corporate sponsors. If you are interested in orchestra seats as an event sponsor, please contact Jeannie Logozzo.

Sponsorship packages range from entry-level event tickets to sponsorship of specific award categories, and all creative combinations in between. Please contact Richard MacManus at ReadWriteWeb if you would like to become a sponsor.

Thank you to the sponsors of the 2007 Crunchies, for helping us recognize outstanding contributions in our industry. Award Benefactors: Adobe, Charles River Ventures, The Mayfield Fund, Microsoft, Our Stage and Sun Microsystems. Thank you also to our Program Sponsors, including amiando our official ticketing sponsor, WeBreakStuff for design and MediaTemple for hosting.

Lastly, I look forward to seeing you all in a couple of weeks. I'm traveling across from New Zealand to be there. See you at the ceremony or after party!

There are bound to be startups disappointed not to have made the cut - and indeed a few of my own favorites didn’t make it. But that is the nature of awards. We received thousands of nominations and the 4 host blogs went back and forth many times to agree on our finalists. Check out the full list below and then go and start voting :-) If you’re a finalist, you may want to add a badge to your site to encourage people to vote for you.

How will we be involved? Read/WriteWeb will be sponsoring some of the award categories that most align with our brand, and we will be involved in category selection and the ceremony. Nominations and voting will start soon at the Crunchies site. There will be a real-world award ceremony and party to announce the awards - date and venue tbc (it'll be in San Francisco though).

Most of all, the awards and ceremony is about celebrating Web startups - all the hard work they put in and innovation they create. So we at Read/WriteWeb are thrilled to be working with TechCrunch, GigaOm and VentureBeat to bring you the Crunchies! Stay tuned for more details over the coming weeks.