A new category recognising the best social impact project was among the most popular among entries for WAN-Ifra’s Digital Media Awards Americas 2025 competition.

Winners were announced in Panama City during the annual Digital Media LATAM conference, with 150 projects from 55 media companies in 16 American countries taking part.

Winning social impact projects came from La Nacion in Argentina – with a series that led to government in Buenos Aires prohibiting cellphones in classrooms – and Eu informo, in Lupa, Brazil, expanding the reach of fact-checking to areas with little or no news coverage.

WAN-Ifra congratulated winners for their effort, creativity and commitment to innovation in digital media.

Winners (by category) were:

| Best Data Visualisation

The fentanyl funnel: How narcos sneak deadly chemicals through the US, Reuters, USA. This journalistic investigation describes a secret route that drug traffickers use to transport chemicals for manufacturing fentanyl from China to Mexico, through the United States. The project uses detailed illustrations that play as the reader scrolls down and continues reading, achieving a surprising visual experience and explanation of the smuggling scheme and the difficulty in stopping it. These visualisations strengthen the journalistic content by presenting complex information in a clearer and more impactful way.

Getting to know Cleveland judges, The Marshall Project and Signal Cleveland, USA – Best Data Visualisation (Local/Small). The Marshall Project in collaboration with Signal Cleveland, created a dynamic guide to Cuyahoga County judges for the 2024 election. This digital guide used data visualisation to present complex information about judges in an accessible and user-friendly manner, which added value for readers by making it easier for them to make informed decisions during judicial elections. The Marshall Project and Signal Cleveland solicited residents’ inputs to ensure that the guide met the needs at every stage of the process, from data collection to design and distribution. This community involvement enriched the guide’s content and fostered a sense of community and civic participation.

| Best in Audience Engagement

2024 Somos Awards, El Comercio, Peru. This campaign was designed to increase El Comercio’s engagement with its audience, leveraging Peruvians’ strong connection with their gastronomy. The campaign invited readers to participate in an interactive voting platform to choose their favourites in various gastronomic categories. This initiative generated a two-way conversation with users and cultivated a sense of community, transforming anonymous visitors into high-value registered users, significantly increasing their reading frequency and the number of sessions on the platform.

WeChat Newsletter and Group, Documented, USA – Best in Audience Engagement (Local/Small). Documented is a modern American newsroom, focused on an audience largely composed of immigrants with limited English proficiency, fostering two-way communication rather than simply disseminating news. Through its weekly newsletter, groups, chats, and in-person events, Documented has achieved a high level of engagement and has built loyalty with its audience, becoming an essential information hub and a bridge between the Chinese community and New York City.

| Best News Website

Aos Fatos’ new redesigned website, Aos Fatos, Brazil. Aos Fatos revamped its website in 2024 to enhance user experience, reflect its growth, and optimise its editorial workflow. Developed with Next.js, the new platform improved performance, navigation speed, and accessibility. Thematic tags, summaries, and research itineraries were incorporated to facilitate content exploration. The redesign increased unique visitors by 7% and streamlined journalistic work through automation, solidifying Aos Fatos as a benchmark in innovative journalism and technology against disinformation.

| Best Use of Video

S.O.S Endangered animals of Argentina, LA NACION, Argentina. This four-episode documentary series seeks to raise awareness about the importance of caring for the environment and wildlife, focusing on four Argentine species in danger of extinction: the puma, the jaguar, the giant otter, and the southern right whale. In addition, the videos were adapted for social networks and in short format for children to expand the audience. The four documentaries had over 96,000 views on the website and over 400,000 on YouTube.

| Best Digital Subscription/Reader Revenue Project

Hincha Centenario Subscription, El Comercio, Perú. El Comercio’s Hincha Centenario project arose from a data analysis that revealed its audience’s strong interest in soccer. The team created a personalised strategy for Universitario de Deportes fans, combining exclusive content, VIP experiences, and a collectable book. The campaign attracted 11,000+ new subscribers with a 13% conversion rate, significantly surpassing industry standards.

| Best Newsletter

White House Watch (formerly known as US Election Countdown), FT, USA. The Financial Times’ “White House Watch” newsletter, formerly “US Election Countdown,” covered the U.S. presidential campaign and continues to cover the Trump administration. With its own style, it explains political events to U.S. and international readers, focusing on financial analysis. It reached more than 100,000 readers in a year, drove more than 70,000 new registrations on the Financial Times, and had high engagement rates.

Redefining Latin American Journalism: The Brazilian Report’s Newsletter Revolution, The Brazilian Report, Brazil – Best Newsletter (Local/Small). The Brazilian Report transformed its business model to a “newsletter-first” approach to deliver essential information about Brazil and Latin America to global leaders. The newsletters offer in-depth and well-researched analysis rather than just news volume and have become an indispensable intelligence source. This strategic shift has made it possible to meet its audience’s needs better, boost reader engagement and retention, and establish itself as a reliable resource for understanding the complex Latin American landscape.

| Best Use of Audio

Necesito Poder Respirar: The life of Jorge González, PRISA, Chile. The documentary podcast reconstructs the life of the influential Chilean musician Jorge González. It uses an immersive narrative with cinematic editing, detailed sound design, original music, and AI tools. The podcast was the most listened to in Chile in its first month, with more than 700,000 plays, and recognised as one of the 10 best in Spanish in 2024.

Behind the Trend, El Heraldo, Colombia – Best Use of Audio (Local/Small). This podcast analyses social media trends in Colombia. It uses an audio format that includes a fictional virtual assistant named ‘Trendy’ to energise the conversation. The podcast explores the origin, expansion, and impact of trends, seeking to understand their meaning beyond virality. The project has managed to consolidate an audience interested in the analysis of digital trends and generate debates on social networks.

| Best Use of AI in the Newsroom

This is how Milei spoke to us. Nine tricks of the libertarian narrative to build a new common sense, La Nacion, Argentina. The project used AI to analyse the speeches of the Argentine president during his first year in office. Using NLP (Natural Language Processing) models and Google’s Gemini Pro, they identified rhetorical patterns, hyperboles, insults, and religious references. AI optimised the workflow by processing 89 hours of audio and 739,961 words, enabling detailed analysis in record time. The project generated 50,000 page views, with 61% of the traffic coming from subscribers, highlighting the audience’s strong response to this innovative journalistic approach.

AI-dventures, Vanguardia MX, Mexico – Best Use of AI in the Newsroom (Local/Small). Through the use of generative AI, Vanguardia MX promotes the participation of children in the journalistic field, instructing them in the creation of narratives using tools such as ChatGPT and Midjourney. This optimises the editorial workflow and seeks to establish a more meaningful connection with the readership by publishing content in various formats, including the newspaper’s website, social networks, and a podcast on Spotify. Additionally, community activities are carried out, positioning the media outlet as an entity that invests in the training of future readers and content creators.

| Best Fact-Checking Project

Promesas Chequeadas: what the data say about the fulfillment of the commitments made by Milei to the electorate, Chequeado, Argentina. This project focuses on verifying the fulfillment of campaign promises by political leaders, offering citizens professional, non-partisan, and transparent monitoring. This project applies a rigorous fact-checking methodology to analyse promises, using official sources, government documents, and expert analysis to assess their degree of fulfillment. Chequeado seeks to strengthen public debate with verified information, combat disinformation, and promote a culture of accountability towards rulers, ensuring that citizens have access to clear and objective information to make informed decisions.

| Best Innovative Digital Product

Inhabitants of the Future (AI-generated children’s content channel – Lumo Media Lab), Caracol TV, Colombia. “Inhabitants of the Future” is a children’s content series created with generative AI for YouTube. The project revitalises classic television characters with modern formats, combining 3D models with popular music. Generative AI optimises production, reducing costs and time, while the digital strategy seeks to attract young audiences and generate revenue through collaborations, licenses, and advertising. The project has achieved over 500,000 views in four months, with several videos exceeding 100,000 views, and has reduced production costs by 90%.

LupaScan, Lupa, Brazil – Best Innovative Digital Product (Local/Small). LupaScan is a public discourse monitoring tool, designed for journalists and researchers, that does not require programming knowledge for its use. Its innovation is highlighted by automating the analysis of public discourse and incorporating a live transcription function, a pioneering feature in Brazil. This tool optimises journalistic work, enabling faster and more accurate information verification, and has been used in the production of reports by Lupa and other media outlets.

| Best Journalism Project

S.O.S Endangered animals of Argentina, La Nacion, Argentina. This four-episode documentary series seeks to raise awareness about the importance of caring for the environment and wildlife, focusing on four Argentine species in danger of extinction: the puma, the jaguar, the giant otter, and the southern right whale. An exhaustive investigation was carried out to select the species, considering their problems and their environment. The production team visited the provinces of Chaco, Santa Cruz, Corrientes, and Chubut to interview those who protect these species and those affected by conservation efforts, seeking to present the challenges and the diverse perspectives surrounding species preservation.

| Best Social Impact Project

Trapped in social media, La Nacion, Argentina. La Nacion comprehensively addressed the impact of social media use on adolescents, a problem that had not been explored in depth. Through a series of publications, the project highlighted the consequences of the phenomenon, from the impact on the mental health of young people to the dynamics in school classrooms, seeking to generate awareness and public debate. They managed to place the issue on the public agenda, generating concrete actions such as the decision of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires to prohibit cell phones in classrooms.

Eu informo, Lupa, Brazil – Best Social Impact Project (Local/Small). With this project, Lupa managed to expand the reach of fact-checking to areas of Brazil with little or no news coverage, through a network of community radio stations that receive free, quality content for their listeners. In 2024, the project focused on the Brazilian municipal elections and brought the content to a potential audience of more than five million people. By providing verified information to these communities, many of which depend on radio as their only source of news, “Eu Informo” contributed to more informed voting decisions and greater awareness about the importance of quality information.