What appeared to be a case of money laundering done through a network of laundromats and car washes (in Portuguese, lava jato means “pressure washing”), turned out to be the largest corruption network in Brazilian history that ultimately extended to at least 12 countries. It has brought businessmen to justice and has shaken more than one government.
A lost dog in Setúbal, a Taiwanese restaurant in Espinheiro, a 91-year-old barber from Jardim São Paulo. These are the kinds of hyperlocal issues specific to neighborhoods in the metropolitan neighborhoods of Recife, Brazil that one-year-old news platform PorAqui aggregates for thousands of readers throughout the capital of Pernambuco state.
The Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism (Abraji) and nonprofit Transparency Brazil launched the project Achados e Pedidos (Request and Found), which aims to be the country’s largest platform for requests and responses to the Law of Access to Information (LAI), as well as a tool to monitor compliance with the legislation.
For almost thirty years, Lúcio Flávio Pinto has been the sole writer and editor of a unique and independent newspaper, which investigators and closely monitors in the powerful in Pará and the rest of Brazil’s Amazon region. His reporting made him a renowned and award-winning journalist around the globe, but also attracted threats and attacks.
Major U.S. newspaper, The New York Times, collaborated with award-winning Salvadoran investigative news site El Faro to publish a report about the gangs of El Salvador.
Through crowdfunding campaigns, also known as microfinancing, or participatory financing, a growing number of Latin American digital news media are able to fund much of their journalistic research and projects.
For Borja Echevarria, vice president and digital editor-in-chief at Univision, the way forward at the legacy media company involves collaboration and diversity.
In little more than 200 words, journalists from across Latin America are telling the stories of their neighbors in highly descriptive snapshots rarely seen in traditional news stories. This is the project called Somos Nosotros.
Nearly 100 journalists from 15 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean worked on the global investigation known as the Panama Papers that is making headlines across the world this week.
The Brazilian Ministry of Justice investigated cases of explosions in cars produced in the country after a Brazilian news site produced a report about them. A digital media startup launched in Venezuela, creating a new source of independent information for citizens in that country. In Argentina, a fact-checking organization can keep politicians and other public figures accountable by comparing their statements with reality.
Investigative news agency A Pública launched on August 8 its first collective fundraising project for independent reporting projects. Using website Catarse, the goal will be to raise enough money for 10 grants of 6,000 Brazilian reais ($2,640 USD) for Brazilian journalists to conduct their own investigations, which will be selected by the project's donors.
In the midst of a supposed crisis in investigative journalism and the advertising-based business model that still prevails in the press around the world, successful initiatives that combine financing alternatives for quality journalism promise a future for investigative journalism. In Brazil, one example is A Pública (The Public), an independent, non-profit investigative journalism agency that allows its content to be freely reproduced online. The agency was founded in March 2011 by the journalists Marina Amaral and Natália Viana, who were unsatisfied with the paths chosen by the Brazilian media.