*This story was updated.
The Latin American winners of the 2018 Data Journalism Awards tapped into the power of big data to report on a missing Argentine submarine, homicides in Caracas and victims of violence in Brazil.
Projects from La Nación of Argentina, RunRun.es of Venezuela, G1 of Brazil’s Globo and BuzzFeed News are among the 13 winners of the international awards announced by the Global Editors Network on May 31 at the GEN Summit in Lisbon, Portugal. And journalist Yudivian Almeida of Postdata.club in Cuba was recognized for honorable mention in the “Best individual portfolio” category.
“The search operation of the submarine Ara San Juan,” by the Data Team at Argentina’s La Nación, including journalists Giselle Ferro, Alejandro Bogado, Manuel Saratella and project leader Carolina Ávila, won the “Chartbeat award for the best use of data in a breaking news story, within the first 36 hours.”
The winning project covered the disappearance of an Argentine submarine. The team used data and geolocation to find ships travelling in the search area, which added visuals and context for extensive coverage of the news event, according to the project description available on the Data Journalism Awards site.
“What ‘La Nacion’ did with its live coverage of the search for a missing submarine is an artifact of future journalism,” the jury said. “Its usage of marine-traffic data in a breaking news context was a great ideas that signals a new wave of journalism based on satellite imagery, sensors and other new types of direct observation.”
The Monitor de Victimas project from Venezuela won for “Best small data journalism team.” The project collects and analyzes homicide data in Caracas, where obtaining official data on the topic is difficult. Digital site RunRun.es carries out the project with Caracas Mi Convive, in alliance with El Pitazo, El Universal, Efecto Cocuyo, Crónica.Uno and El Cooperante.
“The project to memorialise the disappeared in Caracas, one of the most dangerous cities in the world, showed impressive use of open data and on-the-ground reporting,” the jury said. “The team had to extract information from reluctant authorities to document over 1,100 deaths in the city and make it available to their readers.”
And in Brazil, “Monitor da violencia” won the “Microsoft award for public choice” for a similar project. Almost 5,500 people voted for this award, according to the awards’ site. For the project, news site G1 recorded all violent deaths in the country over a period of one week: 1,195. More than 230 journalists collaborated on the stories produced as part of this project.
“Monitor da violencia” is a collaboration between G1, Núcleo de Estudos da Violência of the University of São Paulo and the Brazilian Forum of Public Security.
The project "Hidden Spy Planes," by BuzzFeed News, won the JSK Fellowships award for innovation in data journalism for using machine learning to track surveillance aircraft. Karal Zabludovsky, Mexico bureau chief for BuzzFeed News, co-authored the report "U.S. Federal Agents Flew A Secret Spy Plane To Hunt Drug Cartel Leaders in Mexico."
An honorable mention award for “Best individual portfolio” went to journalist Yudivian Almeida of Postdata.club in Cuba.
“Mr. Almeida and his colleagues at Postdata.club managed to turn the scarcity of Cuban data on its head and use it to their advantage,” the jury said. “Their work is an impressive example of how data sets generated beyond the country’s borders can be used to expose national issues. This is great cross-border data journalism.”
The 13 winners were selected from 86 finalists and Global Editors Network received more than 630 submissions from 58 countries. The competition receives support from the Google News Initiative, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Microsoft and Chartbeat.
Paul Steiger of ProPublica presided over the 18-member jury that chose the winners.
Latin American projects on the shortlist for this year included:
Last year’s winners from Latin America included Rutas del Conflicto of Colombia and Ctrl+X from the Brazilian Association for Investigative Journalism.
*The story was updated to include the win for story "Hidden Spy Planes" by BuzzFeed News.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
