PCIJ story on wealth of justices,
Data Journalism Awards finalist

FOR the second year in a row, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ) has been selected as one of 72 finalists from 19 countries in the 2013 Data Journalism Awards (DJA) by The Global Editors Network (GEN).

The PCIJ’s four-part report titled “The Wealth of the ‘Gods of Faura'” was chosen out of over 300 applications that the GEN received during the screening process. (In the 2012 DJA, the PCIJ’s story, “Opaque LGUs the norm in NCR”, was also one of the 59 finalists.)

For the 2013 DJA, the PCIJ was named a finalist for a story that inquired into the steadily rising wealth of the 14 justices of the Philippine Supreme Court and exposed how the majority had not disclosed sundry fat allowances that they have been receiving, on top of their salaries, in their statements of assets, liabilities, and net worth.

PCIJ executive director Malou Mangahas and PCIJ research director Karol Ilagan wrote the story that was also a joint research project of the PCIJ and Solar News Network.

The PCIJ is the only finalist from Asia in the data-driven investigative reporting small media category of the 2013 DJA.

The 10 other finalists in the category include three from the United States, two from Italy, and one each from Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, and Hungary.

There are four DJA awards categories — data-driven investigative reporting, data-driven applications, storytelling with data, and data journalism website or section.

This year, the DJA has also opened a special category, the “People’s Choice Award”, and encouraged netizens the world over to vote for their favorite data application or visualization nominees.

People may browse the list of nominees by category and vote for their favorite choices at https://app.wizehive.com/voting/dja2013

Projects from small media organization/individuals and large media organizations are judged separately in the DJA. A total of 15,000 euros (around $19,000) will be awarded to eight winning projects.

The winners of the DJA 2013 will be announced during the GEN News Summit in Paris, France, on June 20, 2013. All the finalists have been invited to attend the ceremony.

The 72 nominees will be judged by an international jury of experts chaired by Paul Steiger, editor-in-chief, president, and CEO of ProPublica, the non-profit investigative newsroom based in New York. Before Pro Publica, Steiger was the managing editor of the Wall Street Journal from 1991 to May 2007.

GEN or The Global Editors Network is a nonprofit, non-governmental association “committed to the principles of innovation and information sharing in the newsroom.”

GEN “empowers editors-in-chief, senior news executives, and media professionals from all platforms — print, digital, mobile and broadcast — by optimizing GEN’s network base to create new ideas and journalistic tools, allowing quality journalism to thrive.” More than 900 editors-in-chief have joined GEN and “made the decision to dedicate themselves to a better future for journalism.”

GEN’s 24 board members consist of “top media decisionmakers from news organizations such as CNN, Zeit Online, Les Echos, BBC, Le Monde, Clarin, the Guardian, the New York Times, etc.”

Aside from Pro Publica’s Steiger, the other members of the DJA 2013 jury are Justin Arenstein, publisher and CEO of African Eye News Service (AENS) and HomeGrown Magazines in Nelspruit, South Africa; Peter Barron, Google’s Director for External Relations for Europe, the Middle East and Africa;

Wolfgang Blau, director of Digital Strategy at The Guardian and former editor-in-chief of Zeit Online, the sister publication of Germany’s newspaper Die Zeit; Liliana Bounegru, editor of DataDrivenJournalism.net and project manager on data journalism at the European Journalism Centre; Reginald Chua, editor of Data and Innovation at Thomson Reuters;

Frédéric Filloux, a freelance writer and regular contributor to Slate.fr who teaches Multimedia Journalism at the Sciences Po School of Journalism in Paris; Joshua Hatch, senior editor for Data and Interactives at The Chronicle of Higher Education; Aron Pilhofer, editor of ‘Interactive News’ at the New York Times;

Paul Radu, executive director of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Co-creator of the Investigative Dashboard Concept; Simon Rogers, editor of the Guardian’s DataBlog; and Giannina Segnini, director of the Investigative Unit at the daily, La Nacion, in Costa Rica.

Find the press release from the Perugia International Journalism Festival with the full list of the DJA 2013 finalists.