Newspaper La Nación of Argentina and Cuban site El Toque were the only Latin American media outlets to be recognized at the 2019 Online Journalism Awards on Sept. 14.
Screenshot of one part of the Driver’s Notebooks project from La Nación
La Nación won in two different categories. Its 2018 coverage of the FIFA World Cup in Russia took the award for Sports in a Large Newsroom. The reporting utilized visualizations, simulators, forecasts, results calculator, and more.
The newspaper’s project “Driver’s Notebooks Exposed Argentina’s Greatest Corruption Scandal Ever” won the Al Neuharth Innovation in Investigative Journalism Award for a Large Newsroom. The reporting for this project about government corruption involved a great deal of data that had to be analyzed and verified by the newsroom over several months. As a result of their investigations, 73 people were prosecuted, 40 people were imprisoned and 40 await judgment, according to La Nación.
Cuban site El Toque’s project “La Cuba que viene” (The Cuba that comes) won for Explanatory Reporting from a Small Newsroom. The transmedia and interactive project was “created to increase public awareness and understanding of the constitutional reform that took place in Cuba between July 2018 and February 2019,” according to the outlet. The project involved collaboration between journalists, researchers, jurists, political analysts, software developers and visual designers, and is available offline and through the site’s mobile application for those without internet on the island.
And the James Foley Award for Conflict Reporting went to Honduran photojournalist Tomas Ayuso, who has covered the drug war, forced displacement and urban dispossession in Latin America.
The Online Journalism Awards are given by the Online News Association (ONA), “the world’s largest association of online journalists” that aims to “inspire innovation and excellence in digital journalism.” The awards were presented on the final day of the ONA conference in New Orleans, Louisiana.
