More than 200 reporters, editors, students and journalism professors came together in Santiago, Chile on July 5 and 6 for the First International Workshop on Investigative Journalism Techniques, which served as the inaugural event for the new Chilean Journalists' Network.
The killing of a 16 year old girl on June 10 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, has captivated national attention for the last three weeks, as well as unfurling a media storm that has now turned into a topic of discussion. Critiques on the media immediately began following coverage of the case and reached their highest level with the publication in an Argentinean daily of several photos of the victim.
The Sixth Ibero-American Colloquium took place on April 20 and 21, immediately after the Online Symposium for Online Journalism, also organized by the Knight Center. The event gathered dozens of journalists from Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, and explored three main topics: the sustainability of young news sites, the diversification of their revenue and the expansion of their audiences.
Created in 2009 by acclaimed Colombian journalist Juanita León, news site La Silla Vacía ("The Empty Chair" in Spanish) was born with the mission of demystifying, one story at a time, the way that power works.
Before 2005, crime news dominated the regional media in Chile, according to Paula Rojo, founder of the network of regional newspapers Mi Voz. That year, Rojo and her partner Jorge Domínguez Larraín launched an effort to recruit citizens, representatives from diverse political backgrounds and the social sector to become citizen reporters for their new newspaper.
Now that they've reached the largest social media audience in Mexico, the next step for the popular news site Animal Político is to diversify their sources of revenue and completely avoid the publicity purchased by the Mexican government, the most important advertiser for news outlets covering politics and general information in the country.
Around 70 journalists from Latin America, Spain, and Portugal participated in the sixth Ibero-American Colloquium on Online Journalism, an addition to the International Symposium on Online Journalism with a regional focus.
Non-profit journalism companies get most of their financing from a single foundation or donor, but this model is not sustainable in the long term, warned Kevin Davis, director general of Investigative News Network, which supports 82 non-profit media organizations in 27 US states.
News of a possible government-led advertising "boycott" against the media caused uproar in Argentina, reported the news agency EFE.
On Friday, Feb. 1, Uruguayan President José Mujica announced that he would implement new media regulations in 2013, reported the newspaper El Diario. Mujica did not specify which regulations would be implemented but new media rules were a central part of his administration's political agenda, approved in 2012, noted the newspaper.