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.
Concentrated in the São Paulo – Rio de Janeiro – Brasilia axis, a majority of the Brazilian media ultimately informs the entire population of the country about what happens in these places. But how are people who live in small and medium-sized cities informed about what is happening in their regions?
Access to public information in Venezuela is a guarantee established in the country’s Constitution. However, in reality, if a journalist or citizen wants to know the salary of a public official or the amount of money spent during an electoral campaign, for example, the response in many cases will range from “we don’t know” to “we cannot respond.”
Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission (Conatel for its acronym in Spanish) has kicked two Colombian networks off the air.
Almost a decade ago, Brazilian journalist Marcelo Moreira traveled to Mexico for the first time to participate in a working group to study the situation of journalists in that country, considered then and now the most dangerous place to practice journalism in Latin America.