The School of Journalism and Social Communication at the National University of La Plata in Argentina bestowed the Rodolfo Walsh journalism prize on the president of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo association, Hebe Pastor de Bonafin, reported La Nación. This is the same award that in March was given to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, prompting criticism.
Brazil's National Association of Newspapers (ANJ in Portuguese) has announced that it will award the 2011 Press Freedom Prize to the Argentine newspaper Clarín, reported the news agency EFE.
After recently announcing that it was going to hire 800 journalists and reduce its reliance on freelancers, now AOL's Patch.com is saying it wants to bring on 8,000 bloggers in the next week, reported Forbes blogger Jeff Bercovici.
Journalists from Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Venezuela were three of the four winners of the Ortega y Gasset Journalism Prizes, organized by the Spanish newspaper El País.
Spanish journalist Judith Torrea, author of the blog Ciudad Juárez, en la Sombra del Narcotráfico (Ciudad Juárez, in the Shadow of Drug Trafficking), won the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom award and was selected to be one of the 2011-12 International Knight Fellows.
The international citizen media network Global Voices has chosen Friends of Januária (Asajan), based in the small city of the same name, as one its newest “Rising Voices” grantees for its work against corruption.
Inter American Press Association (IAPA) president Gonzalo Marroquín and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation were honored with Press Freedom Awards this week at the Institute of the Americas in La Jolla, California, IAPA announced.
Amid controversy for the decision to award him a prize, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez received the Rodolfo Walsh Prize in the category “Latin American President for Popular Communication," which the Universidad de La Plata awards every year, La Razón reports. See stories in English by Reuters, CNN, the Associated Press, and other sources.
Latin America is missing profitable opportunities to conserve its forests because bureaucracy and excessive paperwork are tying up the process, an 11-country investigation by 18 reporters in the region concludes. The report on carbon emissions trading presents the first product of a new collective investigative reporting project led by Latin American journalists.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has appointed Brazilian journalist Elisabeth Costa as its new secretary general. Costa, whom the IFJ describes as a “veteran campaigner for union rights and press freedom in Latin America,” will be the first woman and non-European to hold the post.