Launching The Sigma Awards for data journalism
34 international experts gather to create a brand new competition
The Sigma Awards, a brand new data journalism competition, has launched this new year. It aims to celebrate the best of data journalism around the world, but also to empower, elevate and enlighten the global community of data journalists:
“The Sigma Awards aims to be truly global in scope. It also goes well beyond simply celebrating great work, but aims to create a community of global data journalists who will meet, network, and share experiences and knowledge. ”
— Reginald Chua, co-chair of The Sigma Awards
No less than 21 jury members and 10 pre-jury members have been gathered for this first edition, including Alberto Cairo, University of Miami (US), Shazna Nessa, The Wall Street Journal (US), Darren Long, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Momi Peralta Ramos, La Nacion (Argentina), Alastair Otter, GIJN and Passmark (South Africa), and Martin Stabe, Financial Times (UK).
Up for grabs are nine awards, among six categories: best data-driven reporting (small and large newsrooms), best visualisation (small and large newsrooms), innovation (small and large newsrooms), young journalist, open data, and best news application.
Entries to the competition are now open and data journalists from around the world have until 3 February 2020 at 11:59 pm ET to enter via this online form.
The mission of The Sigma Awards is:
- To highlight the very best data journalism being done around the world;
- To build programs and resources around the awards that enable people in and out of the data journalism community to learn from this work;
- To use the awards as a way to unite, galvanize and expand data journalism communities around the world.
To that end, winners will be brought together at the International Journalism Festivalin Perugia on 1–5 April 2020 to celebrate their work but, more importantly, to participate in and lead data journalism panels, discussions and workshops.
The Sigma Awards was created by Aron Pilhofer(Temple University) and Reginald Chua(Reuters), with support from Simon Rogers(Google), and Marianne Bouchart(HEI-DA). It is hosted by the European Journalism Centre’s DataJournalism.com.
Why the “Sigma Awards”?
“The sigma symbol is widely used in mathematics to indicate summation or countability. It seemed appropriate to use that symbol and name for an award that honours and encourages the use of data, analysis, mathematics and technology to pursue, uncover and tell truths.”
— Reginald Chua, co-chair of the competition.
Who’s in the jury?
The jury will be led by Reginald Chua and Aron Pilhofer, co-chairs of The Sigma Awards. We’ve also gathered an incredible group of 21 international experts to go through all the entries this year:
- Liliana Bounegru, University of Amsterdam (Netherlands)
- Alberto Cairo, University of Miami (US)
- Feilding Cage, Reuters Graphics (US)
- Sarah Cohen, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University (US)
- Kenneth Cukier, The Economist (UK)
- Esra Dogramaci, digital strategist and editor (Qatar)
- Steve Doig, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University (US)
- Amr Eleraqi, InfoTimes and the Arab Data Journalism Network (Egypt)
- Govindraj Ethiraj, IndiaSpend (India)
- Joshua Hatch, the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Chronicle of Philanthropy (US)
- Scott Klein, ProPublica (US)
- Darren Long, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
- Shazna Nessa, WSJ (US)
- Alastair Otter, GIJN and Passmark (South Africa)
- Cheryl Phillips, Stanford (US)
- Paul Radu, OCCRP (Romania)
- Momi Peralta Ramos, La Nacion (Argentina)
- Mariana Santos, Chicas Poderosas (Brazil)
- Giannina Segnini, Columbia Journalism School (US)
- Martin Stabe, Financial Times (UK)
- Yue Qiu, Bloomberg (US/China)
Pre-jury
We’ve gathered a group of 10 international experts in data journalism to help us review all the entries submitted this year.
The pre-jury will be led by Simon Rogers, Google (US), also director of the competition and Kuek Ser Kuang Keng, competition officer (Malaysia).
Members of the pre-jury include:
- Gurman Bhatia, Reuters (India/Singapore)
- Eva Constantaras, Internews (Greece)
- Pinar Dag, Dağ Medya, Data Journalism Platform Turkey (Turkey)
- Peter Grensund, J++ (Sweden)
- Mohammed Haddad, Al Jazeera (Qatar)
- Marco Hernandez, Reuters (Singapore)
- Marco Túlio Pires, Google (Brazil)
- Roberto Rocha, CBC (Canada)
The Sigma Awards is sponsored by the Google News Initiative and hosted by the European Journalism Centre’s DataJournalism.com. You can follow us on Twitter @SigmaAwards.
All the information about The 2020 Sigma Awards, including the list of jury and pre-jury members, criteria, and categories, can be found on the competition web page.
