News outlets in Peru and Argentina took home prizes as part of the 2016 Data Journalism Awards given out on June 16 by the Global Editors Network (GEN). The awards recognize “outstanding work in the field of data journalism worldwide.”
Digital news site Convoca of Peru won for News Data App of the Year (Small newsrooms) for the report “Excesses Unpunished,” and Argentine daily La Nación won in the Open Data category for their project Open Data Journalism for Change.
For its investigative series on the country’s mining and oil industry, Convoca first created a database about that industry’s “environmental obligations” and then produced a number of reports and interactive tools based on the data, according to the site.
The project from La Nación used “data as new raw material for journalism and to contribute to open data in Argentina.” According to the publication, it has used data to report on the country’s prison system, Congress, economy and more.
Additionally, the international data journalism investigative project known as the Panama Papers won for Investigation of the Year (Large Newsroom). At least 96 Latin American journalists worked on the project led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The award ceremony took place at the Vienna City Hall in Austria. Winners were chosen for 12 categories and each received 1,000 euros (approximately US $1,100).
Six media outlets from Latin America were nominated for the awards this year. They include newspaper El Universal (Mexico), El Deber (Honduras), Ojo Público (Peru), Convoca (Peru), La Nación (Argentina) and G1 (Brazil). Ojo Público and La Nación were each nominated in two categories.
The jury for the awards was comprised of renowned journalists, including Simon Rogers, data editor at the Google News Lab; Paul E. Steiger, executive chairman of ProPublica, Justin Arenstein; Alberto Cairo, Knight Chair in Visual Journalism at the University of Miami; Shazna Nessa, director of journalism at the Knight Foundation; Angelica Peralta Ramos, data journalism project manager and multimedia development manager at La Nación of Argentina; and data journalist and consultant Giannina Segnini.
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.
