Investigative pieces using data journalism from media outlets in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Bolivia are nominated among finalists in various categories for the Data Journalism Awards 2016, which have been organized by the Global Editors Network (GEN) since 2011.
The award committee received 471 projects from around the world, and selected 63 finalists in ten different categories. The aforementioned Latin American countries are nominated in six of the ten categories. The GEN announced the finalists on May 10 in New York.
Peru and Argentina are finalists in two categories, while Bolivia, Brazil and Mexico are nominated in one.
Mexico’s nomination is in the category “Data Visualisation of the Year (Large Newsroom)” for “Fideicomisos,” a piece done by newspaper El Universal.
Bolivia, a first-time finalist, is nominated for the piece “The Heritage of Evo’s Cabinet” from newspaper El Deber, and Peru is nominated with "Candidates and millions" from the digital outlet Ojo Público. Both are competing in the “Investigation of the year (Small Newsroom)” category.
“Candidates and Millions" also is competing in the category “News Data App of the Year (Small Newsroom)”. In the same category, fellow Peruvian digital news site Convoca was nominated for the report “Excesses Unpunished.”
Argentina is nominated in two categories, both with newspaper La Nación. The daily is competing in the category “Data Journalism Website of the Year,” and in the “Open Data” category for the project La Nación Data-Open Data Journalism for Change.
Brazil is selected in the category “Best Use of Data in a Breaking News Story (within first 36 hours)” for the project Map of Protests in Brazil created by G1, part of Globo Group.
Among the award judges are Simon Rogers, from Google, who will chair the awards this year; Paul Steiger, from ProPublica; Angelica Peralta, from La Nación; and Giannina Segnini, from the School of Journalism at Columbia University.
The global investigation, Panama Papers, which had the collaboration of 96 Latin American journalists, is nominated in the “Investigation of the Year (Large Newsroom)” category.
The awards ceremony will take place in Vienna, Austria, on June 16 during the GEN Summit 2016. Each winner will be awarded 1,000 euros (approximately US $1,100).
With the support of Google News Lab and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Global Editors Network have distributed these awards annually for the past five years.
According to the GEN, this competition recognizes outstanding projects that “bring light to the most innovative data-driven storytelling.” These projects are an important indicator of the trends and techniques in data journalism today.
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.
