The Sigma Awards were launched in 2020 to recognize the best data journalism around the world, and also to preserve and build a media community that is increasingly important for public accountability.

Now, after five years and 2,875 project entries from more than 100 countries, the competition — now hosted by the Global Investigative Journalism Network — has emerged as far more than a prize. It has become a catalyst for more ambitious and innovative public interest projects for newsrooms of all sizes in every region, the focus of a collaborative, sharp-toothed community, and a window into the evolution of data journalism itself.

While many excellent early entries featured the use of traditional spreadsheets, the competition’s diverse jury members have noted significant trends in methodology within this short period — such as the use of AI-assisted investigations, timeline reconstructions, interactive charts, satellite imagery, and greater use of open source databases by reporters without coding skills.

“The Sigmas aren’t just about who’s best — they’re about what’s possible,” says Marianne Bouchart, former executive director of the Sigma Awards. “They are a mirror of the field. You see what others are building, how they’re solving the same problems in wildly different contexts. And for new journalists, it’s a kind of living syllabus: what’s working, what’s next, what’s possible.”

For instance, a favorite piece cited by all the jury members interviewed by GIJN was the 2024 Sigma winner How China is tearing down Islam, by the Financial Times, which used open source satellite images to show that three quarters of the 2,312 mosques analyzed in China had been physically modified to erase Islamic features in just five years. Another story that exemplified “what’s possible” was a 2021 winner, Mapping Makoko, where, despite a tiny budget, Code for Africa used drones, document analysis, and an active partnership with residents to finally map one of Nigeria’s largest informal settlements, whose 250,000 residents had been largely ignored by authorities. And Juego de Votos (Game of Votes) from Cuestión Pública dazzled judges in 2023 by showing Colombian audiences how election candidates were tied to corruption or violence through an interactive format modeled on the popular “Game of Thrones” TV series.

The Sigmas grew out of the Data Journalism Awards (DJA), which were organized by the now defunct Global Editors Network. It was co-founded by two DJA judges, Gina Chua, now executive editor of Semafor, and Aron Pilhofer — chief product officer at the Minneapolis Star Tribune — and several veterans of the DJAs remain jury members on the Sigmas.

“I thought the DJAs were a good thing partly because there really was no dedicated data journalism award,” says Chua, who is also chair of the Sigma Prize Committee. “To its credit, DJA was already global, and, with the Sigmas, we wanted to also recognize good work done with fewer resources or in tough conditions, and build a community where people could see what good work was, share it with each other, and learn from each other.”

Meanwhile, the topics tackled by shortlisted entrants over the five years represent a showcase of the world’s most pressing challenges, from COVID-19 response failures and hidden climate change impacts to rising authoritarianism and the growth of cross-border organized crime networks.

Expanding the Judging Pool

The Sigmas developed a two-tier judging system. First, there is a jury of veteran editors that chooses a shortlist from hundreds of entries. Then, a separate, 17-member Prize Committee selects the annual winners.

“We wanted to have people from around the world, with different areas of expertise and speaking different languages, and now you see the jury is very different from what it used to be, which was Western–centric,” says Chua. “The Prize Committee meets for around three hours, and it’s a really special experience, as these experienced people talk through the merits of such diverse work.”

She adds: “If you look at the winners over the years, it’s very well balanced, geographically, and between large and small newsrooms.”

Another common thread among the winners has been good storytelling and the balanced use of data and human voices as sources in public interest projects. This is key because, as the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s MaryJo Webster has noted to GIJN, data should be the spine of data-driven stories, rather than the body. The few exceptions have been vital public service data projects, such as The Atlantic’s Sigma-winning “COVID Tracking Project,” which used hundreds of volunteer data gatherers to build and maintain the most trusted pandemic database in the US that benefitted hospitals and policymakers.

Each year, Sigma winners are invited to a coveted speaking slot on a panel at the prestigious International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy.

“A $500 prize is really not a huge sum, so what we realized was that the real prize — beyond the peer recognition and sharing — is an opportunity to speak and network in Perugia,” Chua explains. “That’s a rare privilege that doesn’t come lightly.”

How the Awards Grew in the Global South

The Sigmas have seen significant growth in entries from Global South regions since 2022: from 71 in South America in 2022  to an average of 109 now, and from 49 to an average of 82 from Africa and the MENA region during that same time span.

According to Bouchart, this growth, as well as greater format diversity in the entries, can be partially attributed to two seminal Sigma policy changes made ahead of the 2023 competition.

“We made the application form available in eight languages,” she explains. “This was a big deal, because some newsrooms in prior years would not apply because the whole thing was in English. It made a difference in the diversity of entries, and made the judging itself even better, because people filling in the form in their native language made it easier for them to explain how they made it happen.”

She adds: “Each year, we welcome entries from freelancers, coders, designers, cartographers and journalists of all kinds,” she explained. “Our application form is multilingual, because meaningful inclusion starts with access. The result? The Sigmas show what data journalism looks like in Bogotá, in Lagos, in Berlin, in Jakarta — and how it can adapt, surprise, and lead.”

The Sigmas also adopted a seemingly radical proposal from Pilhofer that the awards abandon all judging categories. Bouchart says this no-categories format immediately threw the competition open to the most innovative data-driven work out there. The Sigma Rules page states: “We find categories restrictive… The jury members will decide on the best work overall and come to a consensus on how to divide the US$5,000 cash prize.”

“That made tremendous sense, because people do ‘game’ categories,” Chua adds. However, she notes that this open process added a tremendous amount of work for the juries, who now had to cross-reference entries for fairness. “But it means we don’t have to recognize, say, a data visualization entry if they aren’t very good this year; we can give five investigative prizes or none. But the best part is that you can’t game it. We say: ‘Don’t bother strategizing; just send it in.’”

Veteran Sigma judge Cheryl Phillips says competition saw an interesting spike in social media-based submissions in 2022 and 2023, some of them driven by major visual forensic investigations tracking events like the George Floyd protests in the US and violence against migrants in Europe.

“There was a period of a lot of timeline reconstructions using imagery and video,” Phillips adds. “So, in addition to the big New York Times-type projects, you saw these very small teams using the same techniques, and, because the Sigmas take the size of teams into account, you’d then see their work being more widely seen and discussed. In general, I think we’ve seen a lower proportion of document-driven projects, and more satellite imagery, and new ways to track things, and, more recently, the use of LLMs (large language models) to find bias and disparity.”

She adds: “One of the benefits of the rise of AI is it’s easier to ask questions about how to work with data – to ask ChatGPT: ‘How can I use this code?’ or ‘Explain what this code does?’”

Perhaps more important than digital tools themselves: the competition has witnessed — and sometimes inspired — more confidence among small newsrooms and Global South outlets to simply try open source tools for the first time, or to frame issues in terms of contrasted numbers. Bouchart says this shift in perspective was exemplified by HumAngle’s 2023 project Finding Nigeria’s Forgotten Mass Graves project, where team members had the confidence to combine the use of geolocation tools, satellite imagery, and the voices of families to document human rights violations.

“Early on, many entries from the Global South were either heavily donor-supported or very cautious in tone,” she points out. “Now we’re seeing teams that are bolder, more experimental, and more willing to go after difficult or sensitive stories using data as their anchor. The storytelling is changing. It’s not just about showing a number — it’s about connecting it to the human cost.”

Sigma’s Parallels with GIJN’s Community

When announcing GIJN’s new role as the permanent host of the Sigmas back in January, Brant Houston, chairman of the GIJN Board of Directors, said: “The Sigma Awards and GIJN are a perfect match, especially as GIJN and its member organizations are constantly embracing and promoting best practices in this field.”

For Chua, two of the Sigma pillars — “global” and “community” — made the task of choosing a new administrator an easy one.

“It was clear to me that GIJN would be a natural home, because it is global, and, more than anything else, GIJN really is a community,” she explains. “It’s not US-centric or Western-dominated. It has a very broad-based view of the world; and GIJN already has a strong grounding in data and computational work, even though techniques and tools for investigative work are at its core.”

Phillips, who founded Big Local News and teaches data journalism at Stanford University, says another key alignment stems from the fact that “data journalism and investigative journalism have become more tightly knit, and it’s increasingly clear to newsrooms that data work can enhance accountability.”

“There is a greater understanding that data is everything — a way of measuring and comparing all the information behind a story,” she adds. “The reason investigative reporters should care about data techniques is because they want the power of data in their stories — because data gives evidence to the anecdote.”

Phillips says reporters generally don’t need advanced computational skills to power investigations with data, or even to win a Sigma Award. “I’d say the minimum knowledge level for data journalism is just the ability to work with spreadsheets.”

Bouchart points out that — in addition to the popular reader engagement offered by visualizations and fun interactive graphics — another reason for watchdog newsrooms to add data journalism skills to their arsenal is that it is generally less costly than other accountability journalism practices, such as undercover reporting or hazardous field work.

“In general, the process of finding data; finding the interesting analysis; formulating a data-driven angle that brings something special to your topic; and putting it across to your audience in interesting formats requires little budget,” she explains.

GIJN’s existing prize for investigative journalism, the Global Shining Light Award (GSLA,) honors watchdog journalism in developing or transitioning countries carried out under threat, or in perilous conditions, and is awarded at the biannual Global Investigative Journalism Conference.

As Chair of the Prize Committee, Chua reveals that a similar focus has become a consideration in judging Sigma entries. “We are always acutely aware of what obstacles people face when they do the work,” she explains. “So we ensure people with few resources, or who were under threat, are recognized — including those who produce work that might not seem absolutely great, but which was successful in difficult conditions.”

This focus reveals the real power of the Sigmas — its amplifying effect on projects, on innovation, and on the journalism community.

“Just by seeing what’s out there, it’s helped create that culture where data journalism is celebrated and has more and more impact,” says Phillips. “Sigmas are for data journalism writ large. The power of the Sigmas is that they throw the field wide open.”

---

Rowan Philpis GIJN’s global reporter and impact editor for GIJN. Rowan was formerly chief reporter for South Africa’sSunday Times. As a foreign correspondent, he has reported on news, politics, corruption, and conflict from more than two dozen countries around the world.