Achieve stories told in an innovative way, publish content generating great impact in the community is what Chicas Poderosas will continue doing in 2014, but most important is to share what we know to our Chic@s Poderos@s. Training is one of the great challenges for this year , and we have noticed that relating to this, there are great opportunities in Latin America as the last major survey by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.
This study developed in the last months of last year aimed to investigate «both the state of investigative journalism in the continent and the investigative reporting skills that are being taught in journalism and communication programs across the region». What answered the 9,900 journalists, journalism professors and students did not come out well in the training area .
The Knight Center reported that «asked about journalism education, respondents graded investigative journalism programs in their countries with an average of 3.8 in a 1-through-7 scale, even though the grade was slightly higher among participants who were professors (4.3 average). The lack of professional training and the lack of resources in the newsroom were listed as the biggest challenges facing investigative journalism in the continent. »
The survey also learned that «professional training in this branch of journalism is minimal and mainly based on what journalists have learned on their own and/or from observing their colleagues. Only 27 percent has participated in some kind of investigative journalism course at one time or another, and less than a third of them learned investigative techniques during their undergraduate education.»
Chicas Poderosas will work very hard to reduce the numbers in the lack of training in the media. Ever since 2013 we have developed great journalistic ideas and projects that bring together the best of research and data.
In December, at our last meeting in Costa Rica we made three projects about the use and management of the water . A large database created by geographers and the research team of The Nation, led by Giannina Segnini , served as input to create three publications addressing different angles from the service and empowers citizens to communicate their problems.
At this meeting it was possible that data journalism experts from the U.S., Brazil and England share their experiences with journalists, designers and programmers from La Nación, The Tico Times and The Voice of Guanacaste. At the same time, members of these local media gathered to work for the first time and so far still adjusting to finish the last details to publish in the first half of this year.
And at the end of our meeting in Bogota, conducted in September, we made 13 visual narratives that had a different and innovative stories or tools that help to the community to solve their problems.
Chicas Poderosas comes with all the energy in 2014!!!!!! Our doors remain open to more Chic@s Poderos@s join this network, where we like to do is share what we know in a funny way .
photo by ©Ana Maria from Periodismo de Hoy, Medellín
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