63 Of The Best Data Journalism Projects Of The Past Year

Newspapers, magazines, and digital media outlets from around the world are among 63 finalists for the Global Editors Network's fifth-annual Data Journalism Awards. There's a lot of cool stuff on the short list -- all of it worth checking out.

1. Data Visualisation of the Year (Large Newsroom)

• Clear signs of mobile surveillance in Oslo, despite denial from Police Security Service (Aftenposten, Norway)
• Meet Thomas Drake (AJ+, United States)
• How Red Meat Joined the 478 Other Things That Might Give You Cancer (Bloomberg Graphics, United States)
• Spies In The Skies (BuzzFeed News, United States)
• 144 Stories -- Remembering lives lost in the Peshawar school attack (Dawn Media Group, Pakistan)
• Fideicomisos (El Universal, Mexico)
• Watch how a presidential motorcade can double a neighborhood’s traffic in an instant (Quartz, United States)
• Build a New St. Louis (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, United States)
• Is the Nasdaq in Another Bubble? (The Wall Street Journal, United States)

2. Data Visualisation of the Year (Small Newsroom)

• 800,000 (93 metros for El Español, Spain)
• Histography (Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Israel)
• Shipmap.org (Kiln for UCL, United Kingdom)
• Film Dialogue for 2,000 Screenplays, Broken Down by Gender and Age (Polygraph, United States)

3. Investigation of the Year (Large Newsroom)

• The Panama Papers: Politicians, Criminals and the Rogue Industry That Hides Their Cash (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) -- Süddeutsche Zeitung -- The Guardian -- Le Monde and more than 100 other media partners, globally)
• The Tennis Racket (Buzzfeed News, United States)
• A Plagiarism Scandal Is Unfolding In The Crossword World (FiveThirtyEight, United States)
• What Does Gun Violence Really Cost? (Mother Jones, United States)
• Failure Factories (Tampa Bay Times, United States)
• Homan Square (The Guardian US, United States)

4. Investigation of the Year (Small Newsroom)

• Femicide map in Turkey (Ceyda Ulukaya, Turkey)
• Medicamentalia.org -- A journalistic investigation into access to medicines around the world (Civio Foundation, Spain)
• The Heritage of Evo's Cabinet (El Deber newspaper, Bolivia)
• Candidates and Millions (Ojo-Publico.com, Peru)
• The private firms tracking terror targets at the heart of US drone wars (The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, United Kingdom)

5. News Data App of the Year (Large Newsroom)

• How equal are you? (BBC News Visual Journalism, United Kingdom)
• Berlin’s new skyline (Berliner Morgenpost, Germany)
• What Would It Take To Swing the Election? (FiveThirtyEight, United States)
• Gun deaths in your district: what have your elected representatives done? (Guardian US, United States)
• The Color of Debt: The Black Neighborhoods Where Collection Suits Hit Hardest (ProPublica, United States)
• How Fed Rates Move Markets (The Wall Street Journal, United States)
• The Norwegian Victims of World War II (VG, Norway)

6. News Data App of the Year (Small Newsroom)

• Excesses Unpunished (Convoca, Peru)
• How expensive is your neighbourhood? (Mediafin, Belgium)
• Candidates and Millions (Ojo-Publico.com, Peru)
• What if the Syrian civil war happened in your country? (Public Radio International, United States)
• Guess the salary (Texty.org.ua, Ukraine)

7. Data Journalism Website of the Year

• Caixin, China [link 1][link 2][link 3]
• Dag Medya, Turkey [link]
• El Español, Spain [link 1][link 2][link 3]
• FiveThirtyEight, United States [link]
• Infotimes, Egypt [link]
• La Nación, Argentina [link]
• Quartz, United States [link 1][link 2][link 3]
• The Guardian, United Kingdom [link]
• Zeit Online, Germany [link 1][link 2][link 3]

8. Best Individual Portfolio

• Alberto Lucas López (South China Morning Post, China)
• Chris Zubak-Skees (The Center for Public Integrity, United States)
• Helena Bengtsson (The Guardian, United Kingdom)
• John Burn-Murdoch (Financial Times, United Kingdom)
• Maarten Lambrechts (Mediafin, Belgium)
• Sisi Wei (ProPublica, United States)

9. Open Data

• #breathe (IndiaSpend, India)
• La Nación Data -- Open data journalism for change (La Nación, Argentina)
• Crowdsourcing 1,000 electoral promises (Le Monde, France)
• Global WOW -- Who Owns What (Modern Investor, United Kingdom)
• Budget ins and outs (Mwazna, Egypt)
• Pollution continues to batter city’s lungs, ears (The Express Tribune, Pakistan)
• 1939 Register (Trinity Mirror Data Unit, United Kingdom)

10. Best Use of Data in a Breaking News Story (within first 36 hours)

• Derailed Amtrak train sped into deadly crash curve (Al Jazeera America, United States)
• Measuring Justice Scalia's Tenure (FiveThirtyEight, United States)
• Maps of protests in Brazil (G1, Brazil)
• The Events That Pushed Greece to the Economic Brink (The Wall Street Journal, United States)
• Quick Interactives (Trinity Mirror Data Unit, United Kingdom

Winners will be announced on June 16 in Vienna. The contest is sponsored by Google News Lab and the Knight Foundation.