Why this entry merits consideration

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LA NACION has an integral strategy. More than 17,000,000 UBs in it´s news website, 2,230,555 followers between it´s Twitter channels,  1,070.487 followers between all the newsroom staff Twitter accounts and 2,667,683  fans in total between all of it´s Facebook pages.

Argentina, still has no FOIA and needs to open data and help citizens deal  with this so as to empower them. That´s why the past year we continued to grow our commitment with open and data journalism, introducing open collaboration.

Open data journalism, collaboration and data storytelling using free or reusable tools were our way, not only to lead in quality journalism  but to envision a long term strategy that can help sustain or reinvent journalism and media even in a hostile political context.

We increased our data storytelling by using free reusable tools like Timeline.js, Storymap.js , Tableau,  Tabula, DocumentCloud,  CartoDB, Open Refine and Google collaboration tools and by setting our reusable graphs in javascript and special interactive visualizations for the Elections.

Our data driven investigations are being  presented in judicial cases or amplified by national TV or radios; and our news applications have become a new bridge to integrate NGOs and academia using collaboration as a new form of intelligence.

We continued activating the data community via hacktivism, participating in hackathons, sharing open source code in Github, and organizing our own DATAFEST event.

We learn and train, and in may 2014 we gave our fourth Data Journalism internal training. Even though we are a small team,  we trained on Ruby, D3, CartoDB, Tableau, ArcGis, Open Refine and Excel for DATA.

We algo give workshops on Social and Mobile journalism and keep a pool of smartphones to lend as mobile equipment for journalists who do real time multimedia reporting.

In terms of internal communications we keep track of our newsroom´s  reporting initiatives in a special blog and share them internally, and we have our own “LA NACION Multimedia and Data journalism Awards”.

We believe in openness to serve our audience using Social, Mobile and Data Journalism, mixing social with BI with journalism, engaging hacktivism with industry experts and NGOs, and leading a movement that collaborates and opens data, which together with journalism will leverage digital media as a new tool to empower citizens towards innovation, participation and knowledge discovery.

Three examples of user interface and innovative interactivity:

–  Data as context integrated  as content TAGs: to enrich stories, lanacion.com adapted it´s CMS to integrate data. Every news application or data platform we develop must be structured with this in mind so data can be distributed in topical or persons tags. This helps users understand and dig deeper into stories and backgrounds.

– Open statements of assets from Argentina´s public officials: together with three transparency NGO´s, we developed the first site concerning the heritage of public servants.  This news application allows users to visualize a large volume of information, to search and do comparisons, and it also has an easy visual interface, which includes the possibility to explore every original PDF document in detail, using DocumentCloud. It has helped users because before this they had to go to the Anticorruption office for information. Now data is downloadable in open data formats.

– Junar Open Data Platform: In our “Data Dashboard , LA NACION hosts the datasets that we open and share. We integrated this platform that helps our readers download data, embed datastreams or share them in social media.The platform has an API so any user can download this data in a single action.

On creative use of online technology last months we started using:

–  DevExtreme an HTML5 and Javascript tool  that connects reusable data visualizations with updated data and creates responsive web applications.

Examples provided are updated from datastreams manually by our  journalists. Users can download them in open data formats like XML, CSV  and JSON.

– CartoDB: we developed an exclusive interactive map that allowed visualization of the results of the 2013 parliamentary election  in the different voting centers Buenos Aires. The  map combined three layers of data: the geo-localization of voting centers, the number of votes and the distribution of those votes by party in each center.  

– Vozdata:  our open collaborative platform to transform public PDF documents into structured data. Using Documentcloud,and reusing an idea of Guardian and Propublica with help of our Opennews fellows we developed a platform that served  to activate a community of more than 500 volunteers for our first 6,700 Senate Expenses project fulfilled in two months after organizing two “civic marathons” in LA NACION.

This platform was open sourced.

Social tools strategy: La Nacion has an active focus on the use of social tools for reaching and including the audience in their work . More than 35 branded official channels with more than 2MM followers, 130 journalists on Twitter, a 35 blog network, which has thriving communities that daily participate in the content of each blog by posting their comments (for example, in Movies, Amateur Cooking and Gay Friendly blogs). Many of these also have a very active  Facebook Fan page participation (Cooking and Gardening for instance).We work with our audience on Facebook, generating specific content on the various pages of lanacioncom (with more than 913 995 fans), canchallenacom (our sports site),sections Fashion/Beauty and Culture, and fanpages of some of our blogs.

We’ve also started with Instagram initiatives for different channels and magazines.

Third parties support include awards, special funding and/or praise from Tow Center at Columbia University,  ONA International, Tableau Software Inc., The Knight Foundation, The Knight-Mozilla OpenNews program, GEN, International Journalism Festival, Open Government Partnership, ICFJ, EJC, Journalism.co.uk, Regional Conference on Open Data for Latinamerica,  US Embassy in Argentina
Original reporting:

– Statements of assets

– Senate expenses

– Legislative Elections in Argentina

– 30 years of democracy in Argentina

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Public officials salaries and assets for reporting and accountability

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“Click to access to Statements of Assets integrated Tag”

LA NACION decided to fight for transparency in public officials salaries and declaration of assets as we feel that even in a country without FOIA, journalism and citizens must know and share what they know about how politicians earn their money, and how they compare with others or with other periods. This is a tool that is also helping detect cases of corruption, regarding public spending and companies owned by official´s relatives or friends.

To aggregate stories, we integrated the news application with the open dataset and Lanacion.com´s CMS using a TAG that gathers all the stories that are coming out about these Declarations of Assets or salaries of the president and ministers we also requested and opened .

Main stories and data:  Seguir leyendo →

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Argentina´s Senate Expenses 2004-2013

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Extracting stories from public DATA formerly unstructured and in PDFs.

After finding out that Senate have published expenses since 2004 in raw PDFs, some of them as images and completely unstructured, LA NACION data team managed to scrape, transform, normalize and structure three datasets into one and began an interrogation process that included front page stories, replies from actual and former Argentina´s vice presidents (Senate presidents), and provoked a judicial investigation over vicepresident Amado Boudou regarding these expenses. This series of front page stories lead to more stories and different approaches to keep Senate accountable.

As we converted these PDFs into OCR txt files, we realized that we have lots of information lost as a consecuence of very noisy PDF´s. Besides, we realized that there would be more stories if more eyes helped us classify and enter this data. So we decided to ask for help: inspired in The Guardian MP´s Expenses and Propublica´s Free the Files, we asked our Knight-Mozilla Opennews Fellow 2013 Manuel Aristaran to help us develop “Vozdata” a platform for Crowdsourcing data in a structured way .

He developed “Crowdata” working together with Gabriela Rodriguez our Opennews Fellow 2014. We launched our first “Senate Expenses Vozdata project with a dataset of more than 6700 PDFs that took two months to be processed.

To fulfill that, again we asked for collaboration and activated our community organizing  two “Civic Marathons” with NGO´s , Universities and users. See all the details here.

At the same time, one of our journalists heard that in Senate there had been a big growth of the amount of employees and as our data team has been scraping during 30 months (since november 2011),  the lists of Senate permanent, temporary and contracted employees, we could release a unique and original analysis that became a new finding sustained with data and visualizations. In this period , senate employees and contracted went from 3.700 to 5.700 which meant a 55% of growth. Again, our vice president Amado Boudou replied to these articles using the official channel in national TV , but he could not deny any of the numbers on the reporting.

Here are the details, data collection and data analysis process and the articles and visualizations.

Regarding all the Senate Expenses stories, as they were many and some of them are still in judicial investigations, we decided to put them all together in a Tag home page

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/gastos-en-el-senado-t49163

So here is the process and how we did this , together with new stories:

Play it in HD!

Thanks to building this dataset from scratch and analysing dates, we also found out that some expenses of official trips were presented with dates that were overlapped and even included some trips that were not made.  Seguir leyendo →

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2013 Legislative Elections in Argentina

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Introduction

LA NACIÓN produced a multimedia and multiplatform coverage of the 2013 parliamentary elections with a focus on innovation through database journalism as the fundamental tool to show the contents in a new way and to present the information transparently for the electorate and citizens in general.

To add value to the press coverage and not repeat classical approaches, the 2013 Elections project included the development of different interactive and research pieces using data as the primary source.

These contents were included/ grouped in a specific item of the coverage called The electoral magnifying glass (La lupa electoral). Journalists from both platforms (online/paper) worked on the productions of this category. In fact, many of the works published in this space were generated by editors that were in the Data Journalism Program, a LA NACIÓN special training program for its journalists. The project lasted 6 months. 15 people participated. It was an internal challenge for the company, since it implied the integration and the joint work of the paper and online staff, the LNData team, and the Product and Marketing areas.

Real Time Data Generating and Analysis

 

Election 2013 case summary projects:  Seguir leyendo →

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The 30 years of Democracy in Argentina´s Anniversary

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Recent history of Argentina changed completely on sunday 30th, 1983. Raúl Alfonsin won the elections and became president which meant, returning to democracy and ending the period of military dictatorship.

To cover this anniversary LA NACION developed a transmedia experience that allowed users simulate a real time elections coverage with digital platforms but using the 1983 original content.

They could experience in real time, 30 years later, this historical elections. This implied an intense research work into our archives, together with multimedia and other materials so as to offer context information like social movements during the weeks previous to the elections, the TV and radio spots and caimpaign ads from Raul Alfonsin , and the newspaper´s front pages.

For us it was a different way to live again this special moment, using present technologies but not in a traditional digital coverage that would be a secuential one way production. This simulated coverage was live from October 19th to November 1st, 2013, based in a narrative that was spread by social media.

Revive history, in real time  

Through the Twitter account @LNvoto83 https://twitter.com/LNvoto83 the coverage published exclusive documents that were crucial to simulate those days in real time and transport users throuth time. All this tuits were published with the hashtag #Voto83.

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DATA as context integrated in content TAGS

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As a way to enrich stories, Lanacion.com adapted it´s CMS to integrate data as context in our content topical tags. Every news application or data platform we develop must be structured with this in mind so data as context can be distributed in topical or persons tags.

To do this, we first normalize names and then cross them with our TAGS database, and those that are in both datasets are automatically augmented by data or direct urls to our news applications.

For example: in a Legislator´s tag: her Statement of Asset, her path in politics, and even her profile can be presented, together with all the reporting.

Example 1) Person´s TAG: this is Elisa Carrio´s TAG – home page in Lanacion.com

This is the link to our Statements of Assets news application – Elisa Carrió statements of assets page

Elisa Carrio´s Political path from another of our news application “Laberinto Político”

We partnered an NGO that monitors legislative transparency Fundación Directorio Legislativo, and they make every year the Book “Directorio Legislativo” and a web site with structured profile data from Congressmen and Senators. So other link that serves to learn more of that legislator is the “Ficha en Directorio Legislativo”, and it looks like this:

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Open statements of assets from Argentina’s main public officials (APP)

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In Argentina, where we don´t have an access to information law yet, LA NACION and other three NGO´s that work towards transparency (Poder Ciudadano, ACIJ and Fundación Directorio Legislativo) worked together to develop the first site concerning the heritage of public servants, making the information accessible to anyone with a computer and an Internet connection.

The work included more than 30 volunteers manually entering data and generating a structured and searchable dataset from scanned PDFs. The project included all of LA NACION DATA team, using  collaborative tools, coordinating cross checking procesess and 6 full day check-a-thons that included the volunteers.

As they assume their public duties, public officials in Argentina,  are required to fill out a statement declaring their assets and then they are asked to update that information every year, while they’re in office. Even though the records are public, the information was not easily accessible to ordinary citizens, and of course when asked, it were given in print copies.

Declaraciones Juradas Abiertas was born in a unique political scenario. A new law regulating public officials’ affidavits was passed, which omits asset information of the children and spouses of public officials in future affidavits, reducing the amount of information previously available. The family asset situation is vital to create a chart of the current patrimony of a public servant for an illicit gain investigation. The application, which was launched on Sept. 28 (International Right To Know Day)  includes 1540 affidavits from more than 800 public officials (the members of President Cristina Fernández’s cabinet of ministers, legislators and judges, among others). It contains detailed information about their financial assets and properties over the years.

The interactive application that allows users to read a large volume of information and do comparisons, with an easy visual interface, includes the possibility to explore every original PDF document in detail, using DocumentCloud.

After the requests of the statements of assets was made to the Anticorruption Office (OA) and other offices, all the information came in print and in boxes. Each file was around 5/7 pages long.

The priority was given to the affidavits of the most relevant seats of each power and to the candidates for october 2013 legislative elections.

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Open Data Catalog using Junar Open Data Platform

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In  March 2012 we launched our “Data Dashboard” or Data Store.

This site hosts the datasets Lanacion.com is opening and is powered by “Junar” an open data platform. We integrated this platform that helps our readers download data, embed datastreams or share them in social media.

The platform has an API so than any user can download all data in a single action.

As a way to ease navigation and serve our users we are offering special catalogs for inflation in Argentina from different sources as this is a very controversial and sensitive information in Argentina.  Seguir leyendo →

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VozData: collaborating to free data from PDFs – The Senate Expenses part II

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VozData screenshot

1. Introduction

VozData is a collaborative tool for converting public documents trapped in PDFs into a structured database that all citizens can understand and journalists can report from.

The application is inspired in “Free the files” by Propublica.org and “MP´s Expenses” by The Guardian; it allows readers and users to be part of the process of checking documentation that is vital for citizen participation and control of information produced by governments.

The first project of this initiative focused on expenses by the National Senate and included 6500 renditions of accounts issued by the General Accounting Office (Dirección General de Contaduría) of that chamber for the years 2010, 2011, and 2012, published on the official site of the institution.

Senate Expenses is a project that continues the investigation of the same name, winner of the 2013 DJA (See more here). LA NACION had a great number of public documents in PDF format that presented enormous difficulties for processing, and even applying six different OCR engines, valuable information is still being lost.

But the value and the amount of stories and even judicial investigations that were discovered by this project lead us to open and put it now in the hands of our audience, so they could detect more stories. We collected this stories in an integrated TAG of our CMS in Lanacion.com Seguir leyendo →

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CartoDB for Elections Mapping

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The LNData team with Manuel Aristarán, Mozilla OpenNews fellow 2013, developed an interactive map that allowed visualization of the results of the 2013 parliamentary election  in the different voting centers of CABA and Buenos Aires province. Also there was access to the details of the telegrams from all tables for more information.

The map in CartoDB combined the geo-localization of voting centers with the number of votes and the distribution of those votes by party in each center. The size of the bubble on the map represented the difference between the winner and the runner-up. 

The team did a pilot test for the primaries (known here as PASO) and repeated the experience in the October 27 election.

 How the results turned out in the school that you voted?

 

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