The Sigma Awards are defined as “a competition to celebrate the best data journalism from around the world.” In this edition the jury has especially valued projects related to the COVID-19 pandemic, but not only those.
Maldito Dato has received the nomination as “best portfolio” for the work of the section during 2021, focused especially on the coverage of the pandemic and the use of transparency laws to carry out journalistic investigations.
In Maldito Dato’s 2021 portfolio are, among other works, the investigation into the occupancy of Spanish hospitals during the pandemic, the list of attendees at the Interterritorial Health Council, the early vaccination of 377 non-care staff of the Murcia Regional Health Department, and the hiring of retired nurses and doctors by the autonomous communities.
The work of Maldito Dato has been shortlisted among 603 submissions from 379 media outlets and organizations representing 76 different countries. The list of nominees includes internationally renowned work such as the 'Pandora Papers', by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), or 'OpenLux', by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), as well as projects from media outlets such as The Economist, BBC News, Reuters, La Nación, The Marshall Project or ProPublica.
Among Spanish media outlets, the data team of elDiario.es and the data journalist from La Vanguardia Laura Aragó have also been nominated for best portfolio. Fundación Civio has been nominated for its investigation into emergency contracts during the pandemic, and Mariano Zafra and Javier Salas, from El País, for "Un salón, un bar y una clase: así contagia el coronavirus en el aire". Spanish journalists Adrián Blanco, from The Washington Post, and Carmen Aguilar, from Sky News, have also been nominated in the best portfolio category.
The winners of the Sigma Awards will be revealed next April. The jury that selected the nominees was led by data journalists Simon Rogers, data editor at Google, and Kuek Ser Kuang Keng, data editor at the Pulitzer Center. The jury that will choose the winners will be headed by two other renowned data journalists: Gina Chua, executive editor at Reuters, and Aron Pilhofer, professor of Data Journalism at Temple University in the United States.