May 2021 be the year you win a data journalism award
For its second edition, the Sigma Awards celebrates the best of data journalism and teams up with international communities to support data journalists worldwide
Let’s start this new year with a cheer, please, to all the journalists worldwide who’ve had to cover the pandemic, learn new skills on the spot, and adapt to new work settings. We’ve seen incredible journalism being done all over the globe through the past year, showing how wonderfully some news teams have managed to cover the COVID-19 outbreak, as well as national elections and other topics, regardless of the challenges brought by the pandemic.
The entire media industry has had to adapt and find ways to carry on providing good, accurate, and relatable news to their audience, despite the ever-changing (and sometimes unreliable) data and information being provided.
“I’ve been so proud of data journalists this year, analysing the facts at a time when misinformation is so prevalent and making them truly accessible,” Simon Rogers, data editor at Google and managing director of the Sigma Awards.
The international data journalists community is growing, as many have had to become one overnight, with no other choice than learning the skills to understand the sometimes confusing health data published on official websites, and other platforms. We salute you and we want to support you.
At the Sigma Awards, we celebrate the best data journalism from around the world. We are also here to empower, elevate and enlighten the global data journalism community. And that’s why we want to support all members of this group in these difficult times.
We’re very proud to be running the Sigma Awards 2021 competition at the moment, which is free and open to all data journalists worldwide. It is here to highlight the best data journalism projects being done around the world over the past year, on COVID-19 related issues, as well as other topics. Indeed, lots of incredible projects have been published, in all regions of the world, and we want to celebrate that great work, compile them into a database, and share it with you.
So if you feel like your organisation has published remarkable data-driven projects in 2020 that deserve to be in this database and maybe win a prize, go on and take a moment to fill that form. The deadline to apply is February 1st, 2021 at 11:59pm ET.
Teaming up with the global data journalism community
We also aim at building a community that endures beyond the awards themselves. That’s why we’ll be setting up webinars, live chats and gather online resources tackling real urgent issues met by data journalists today, with one goal: to ignite collaborations and discussions between members of our community.
That’s why this year the Sigma Awards has partnered with several regional data journalism competitions around the world to pursue a joint effort in rewarding the best data journalism worldwide: the Claudio Weber Abramo de Jornalismo de Dados (Brazil), Korea Data Journalism Awards (Korea), the Philip Meyer Award by IRE (US), the Arab Data Journalism Awards by ADJN (Egypt) and Pakistan Data Journalism Awards (Pakistan).
Together we’ll help each other identify at a regional level the great data journalism being done in the five continents. Down the line, we hope to organise online events, virtual conferences and various initiatives together so that data journalism communities around the world can learn from one another.
More about the Sigma Awards 2021 competition
Meet the jury
We’ve gathered over 35 international data journalism experts in our jury and pre-jury, to go through all entries and elect the winner(s). Together, they represent the 5 continents and the best minds in the data journalism industry.
What’s the prize?
A US$5,000 cash prize will be split amongst the winners. They will also be brought together to participate in and lead online data journalism panels, discussions and workshops.
They will not only learn from each other, but will be reaching out to the broader community of data journalists and would-be data journalists, building relationships that will help spark better collaborations and work around the world.
One new rule to ease them all
We find categories restrictive and so 2020. We want to be able to reward great work in the best way possible. So the jury members will decide on the best work overall, and come to a consensus on how to divide the US$5,000 cash prize. This means there are no categories this year.
Journalists worldwide just need to submit their work by filling our online form and our pre-jury and jury of international experts will take care of the rest.
Why have we decided to scrap categories this year?
“At some level, of course it makes sense to have categories; we all understand there are many kinds of journalism we want to celebrate — investigative work, work done on deadline, immersive visualizations, and so on — and it helps to ask people to tell us how their work should be sorted.
But categories can also be arbitrary, not just in journalism awards but in life. Some work may be good across multiple disciplines, but perhaps not the best in any one; others may break existing categories and offer a new way of looking at data journalism. That’s why we eliminated categories this year; we want to be able to find the best work that exemplifies a wide range of journalistic genres and skills, and celebrate those achievements.”
Gina Chua, Sigma Awards co-chair
2020 has been a special year for all members of the data journalism community, and we expect to receive a large number of entries tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we’d like to specify that all data journalism projects, regardless of their topics, can be entered in the competition.
What we’d like to see
We are looking for great data collection and analysis in the service of journalism, ideally shining a light on facts and issues of public interest that would otherwise not be known.
We’ll also give a special attention to great storytelling and engagement of (ideally) that kind of reporting, and probably visually and interactively (although not necessarily).
“Data journalism has become mainstream around the world and I expect to see exciting entries from operations of all size.”
Simon Rogers, managing director
We’d like to reward great public service, either in the kind of reporting/analysis of a story(ies) or in terms of empowering communities to discover important information for themselves.
Finally, the jury is also looking for great innovative ideas that will likely move the field forward.
“Last year we saw quite an equal representation from different parts of the world. Among the 510 entries received, a third of them came from Europe, another third came from the Americas, and the rest from Asia, Africa and Oceania. In terms of organisation size, the ratio between big newsrooms and small newsrooms is 6 to 4. This year we aim to achieve the same inclusiveness and diversity with more participation from Africa and small newsrooms.”
Kuek Ser Kuang Keng, competition officer
A tip for entrants
“It’s really important for us to see the impact of your work, so make sure to let us know what happened when you published.”
Simon Rogers, managing director
The Sigma Awards competition was created by Aron Pilhofer (Temple University) and Gina Chua (Reuters), with support from Simon Rogers (Google), Marianne Bouchart (HEI-DA), and Kuek Ser Kuang Keng (HEI-DA). It is supported by the Google News Initiative.
The first edition of The Sigma Awards was put together in just four weeks, ended up being a great success, and exceeded our expectations with 510 entries from 287 organisations in 66 countries/areas. However, the winners celebrations, which was supposed to take place at the International Journalism Festival 2020, was cancelled because of the pandemic. This year, we’ll run the competition remotely from start to finish, including the winners’ celebration. So stay tuned for more information on how that will pan out.
You will find all the details about the competition (including the rules, list of jury members, and prizes) on our new website.
