The Sigma Awards celebrate the best in data journalism from around the world. Speaking at the Perugia International Journalism Festival, three of the founders of the award highlighted the best projects of recent years and pointed to what journalists can learn from these data stories.
For newsrooms looking to deepen their understanding of how artificial intelligence could be used for investigative reporting, the 150-year-old Argentinian newspaper La Nación is blazing a trail and has produced a diverse range of stories assisted by AI technologies and has created an AI lab.
Despite a backlash against the media in Latin America, investigative journalists have refused to stay silent. Here we highlight eight of the best investigative stories published in Spanish in the region this year, selecting those that prioritized collaboration, used innovative investigative methods and tools, and those that reached new audiences.
Data journalism is booming in Latin America, particularly in Argentina. La Nación data journalist Carolina Ávila, who led the team that won the best use of data in a breaking news story category in the 2018 Data Journalism Awards, shares their secret to success — an interdisciplinary team, creativity and ability to turn around stories quickly.
You don’t need the resources of The New York Times to create a data journalism team in your newsroom. But you do need to think out the structure. Here are 10 things you should consider if you are considering setting up your own team.
The ability to protect journalism sources in the digital age is rapidly deteriorating. Those are the conclusions of an important new study recently released by UNESCO. GIJN has excerpted key portions here, drawn from extensive research and interviews with investigative reporters, editors, legal experts and freedom of expression specialists from 17 countries.
Here’s how the data team at Argentina’s La Nación dug into 40,000 audio recordings collected by prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was murdered while investigating a Buenos Aires terrorist attack tied to Iran.
There is a huge amount of data available on pollution and disease caused by the Matanza River – widely known as River Riachuelo – the problem was transforming it into information that those affected could easily understand. In a special multimedia report, La Nación used open data and data visualization to illustrate the extent of the problem.
Access to public information, accountability and participatory democracy may have been a reality in many countries for some time — but in Spain they sounded like a utopia. Entrepreneur Jacobo Elosua and computer technician David Cabo decided that this had to change. Their brainchild, Civio, was just recognized with the Gabriel Garcia Marquez award in innovative journalism for its Medicamentalia investigation.
Mauri König is a Brazilian investigative reporter. Last October, at the Global Investigative Conference in Lillehammer, König shared first place in the Global Shining Light Awards for his investigation “Empire of Ashes” on tobacco smuggling in Latin America. In this interview, Konig shares his views on what it’s like to uncover illicit interests involving the president of a country while working in a highly dangerous environment.
