This year, the most prestigious award of the Brazilian press, ExxonMobil Award of Journalism (formerly known as Esso Award, or Prêmio Esso), went to a story that used a public online database as its main source. On the night of Nov. 12, two members of the Estadão Dados team, José Roberto de Toledo and Rodrigo Burgarelli, along with reporter Paulo Saldaña, won the award in the main category for “Farra no Fiés” (Farra in Fiés).
A transnational collaboration between two Latin American digital sites has resulted in yet another data journalism project that exposes structures of some of the region’s biggest power players.
Latin American journalists now have a tool that allows them to discover the best published journalistic research and articles in the region. The tool is known in Spanish as the Banco de Investigaciones Periodísticas (BIPYS), a database of journalistic investigations created by the Press and Society Institute (IPYS for its acronym in Spanish), which has been open for public access since July 6 through a paid subscription.
In late 2012 Chilean journalist Miguel Paz, an ICFJ Knight International Journalism fellow, launched with a group of colleagues a data journalism platform called Poderopedia, which helps reveal the network of relationships between business and government elites in Chile.
When the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) got its hands on a leak with millions of documents containing details on hundreds of secret companies in tax havens, it put together one of the most impressive groups of reporters ever assembled to participate in what the organization is already calling “the most ambitious cross-border investigative project in history." More than 100 reporters in 58 countries participated in examining the documents and have already produced several articles on what they have revealed.
After a five-month wait, Nación Data has launched the Spanish version of the Data Journalism Handbook. The book is free, open-source, and is designed to help journalists use data to improve their stories.
The International Center for Journalists named three Latin American journalists and a Portuguese designer who instructed a course for the Knight Center as the next Knight International Journalism Fellows last week.
In 1994, journalist Giannina Segnini founded a one-woman investigative unit—herself—at Costa Rica’s La Nación newspaper. Since then, the unit has grown into a five-person team that is trailblazing data journalism in Latin America, according to Journalism.co.uk.
On Monday, Aug. 20, the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo announced the launch of the website FolhaSPDados, an online resource for the up-coming mayoral elections in the city of São Paulo. The website will feature interactive maps and infographics to illustrate and accompany the newspaper's coverage of the election's main themes.
On the one hand, there are reporters that are eager to tease out available data and extract valuable information about public administration. On the other hand, there are technology enthusiasts that are trying to find ways to build mapping and information visualization tools that can circulate on the world web. What happens when you put these two groups together? Searching for an answer, the Brazilian newspaper Estado de S. Paulo will launch the first hacker marathon, or "Hackathon," organized by a news outlet in Brazil.