On Oct. 3, the governor of Puerto Rico announced that 63 of 69 hospitals in the U.S. territory were “operational.” It was an unbelievable achievement since Hurricane Maria had made landfall almost two weeks prior as a Category 4 hurricane. Regardless, a local non-profit focused on investigative journalism sought to uncover the truth.
Despite the approval of a new communications law in 2014, historic media concentration in the hands of a few economic groups persists in Uruguay, according to a recent investigation. A pending Jan. 1, 2019 deadline means these media companies have just over a year to adapt to the legislation.
Can a rapidly growing digital media outlet, which focuses exclusively on judicial matters and which charges for information, succeed and become sustainable in the current media environment? The founders of Brazilian site JOTA – named for the J in Justice – are proving that yes, all this is possible.
When Colombian literature Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez died in April 2014, in addition to the sadness that followed, a need arose in the Colombian community to ensure his legacy would continue from generation to generation.
Brazil is in "red alert" due to the high concentration of audience, of property and geographical location, lack of transparency and economic, political and religious interference in the country's media. This is the main conclusion of the survey on media ownership in Brazil carried out by the Intervozes communication collective in partnership with the international organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF for its acronym in Spanish).
Corruption, a common concern among citizens and journalists from several Latin American countries, will be the theme of an exclusive index for the region that plans to launch next month. Daily Corruption: News Feed & Database will provide quantitative and qualitative data on a range of relative variables for ongoing cases in 29 Latin American and Caribbean nations.
On Oct. 7, the Brazilian digital newspaper Nexo won a 2017 Online Journalism Award (OJA) in the category "General Excellence in Online Journalism - small newsrooms.” As a result, the outlet became the first in the country to win the top category of the prize from the Online News Association (ONA), which recognizes the excellence of digital journalism around the world.
As with the Panama Papers, Latin American journalists played pivotal roles in the management, reporting and editing of the global investigation known as the Paradise Papers, a reporting project led by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) that analyzes a trove of 13.4 million documents revealing details about the offshore activities of individuals and entities around the world.
International and Puerto Rican media have set up shop in the Puerto Rico Convention Center, creating a de facto newsroom in the same building where officials give press conferences and citizens look for resources.
They got to work securing transmitter antenna and covering the windows of their newsrooms with plywood. Enough food and water were purchased to last for several days. Volunteers were called in to relieve exhausted employees when the time came that they couldn’t stay awake any longer, or had to attend to their own families and homes.
In its two years of existence, Peruvian site Convoca has produced investigative reports based on the law of transparency and access to information that were internationally awarded and even motivated a legislative change in Peru. Now, Convoca will use its expertise to help train the next generations of investigative journalists who will monitor those in power in the country.
On Sept. 16 in São Paulo, the Rede de Jornalistas da Periferia (Network of Journalists of the Periphery) will hold Virada Comunicação 2017, an event to discuss and propose new approaches to journalism from the point of view of communicators and residents of the regions most disconnected from the centers of Brazil’s great cities.