Google-backed Data Journalism Awards open for entries

The Global Editors Network has today announced the launch of next year's Data Journalism Awards.

It is the second year of the international competition which recognises the "outstanding work in the growing field of data journalism", GEN said in a release.

A total of €15,000 (around £12,000) will be awarded to eight winning projects in the Google-supported competition.

Launching this year's awards at a press conference at the Guardian, Datablog editor Simon Rogers, who is a judge of the awards, urged news outlets and organisations large and small to enter. Data journalism is "not expensive", he said, "it's not about maths".

"It's not about producing pretty charts and graphics. It's about something that's very basic to journalism: it's about telling stories."

He explained that data journalism is not new, with the first edition of the Guardian including data stories. "It's not new but there is a real flourishing of it throughout the world as there are so many new tools."

Rogers hinted at what he would be looking for as a judge. "It's not about showing how clever you are," he said, but demonstrating skills when presented with "horrible data". He said he would also be impressed by entries which demonstrate an openness with data.

Peter Barron, Google's director of external relations, said Google had always been impressed with GEN's focus on digital journalism.

He added last year's awards saw a "very encouraging" number or entries across the world.

Candidates can apply for the Data Journalism Awards from today (14 December). There are four categories: data-driven investigative journalism, data-driven applications, storytelling with data, and data journalism website or section.

GEN, which launched in March last year and runs an annual news summit, welcomes applications from individuals as well as small and large media organisations. This year there will be a 'public choice award' as voted by the public.

Last year saw six projects receive awards, including a Guardian interactive on the riots.

Applications for this year's awards, which must include work published after 10 April 2012, can be submitted from today. The deadline for submissions is 5 April 2013, short-listed candidates will be announced during the Perugia International Journalism Festival 2013 on 27 April and the winners will be announced on 20 June 2013 at the GEN News Summit in Paris.

At today's launch event Bertrand Pecquerie, chief executive of GEN said an "international news hackathon" will run at the same time as next year's summit.

Judges for the awards are: Paul Steiger, ProPublica; Justin Arenstein, African News Innovation Challenge; Peter Barron, Google UK; Wolfgang Blau, Zeit Online (who will be joining the Guardian as director of digital strategy in 2013); Liliana Bounegru, European Journalism Centre; Reginald Chau, Thomson Reuters; Frederic Filloux, Les Echos; Joshua Hatch, the Sunlight Foundation; Aron Pilhofer, New York Times, Paul Radu, Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project; Simon Rogers, Datablog editor, Guardian; and Gianina Segnini, La Nacion, Costa Rica.

This year there is a new rule which allows entries from outlets with a judge on the panel. Pecquerie explained that if an organisation such as the Guardian or New York Times enters, the judge from that outlet will not be permitted to vote.

Journalism.co.uk is a media partner for the awards. Other media partners are Nieman Journalism Lab, Online News Association, CartoDB, Data Publica, Daten Journalist, and visualizing.org.

Further details on how to enter are at this link.

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