COSTA RICA NEWS – La Nacion’s former crack investigative reporter, Giannina Segnini, has been awarded by the Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, the Maria Moors Cabot Prizes for outstanding reporting on Latin America and the Caribbean.
“From war reporting to data journalism and political cartoons, this year’s Cabot winners bring us the news on diverse platforms, and they are the best in the profession,” said Steve Coll, Dean and Henry R. Luce Professor of Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism. “The depth and insight of their reporting keeps the world informed about this critical region and make us proud to honor their work at Columbia.”
The Cabot Prizes honor journalists who have covered the Western Hemisphere and furthered inter-American understanding through their reporting and editorial work. Founded in 1938, they are the oldest international journalism awards.
Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger will present gold medals and a $5,000 honorarium to each winner, and a certificate to the citation honorees at a dinner and ceremony on Wednesday, October 15th, at Low Library on the university’s Morningside Heights campus.
The Cabot prize says as a leading investigative journalist in Central America for almost two decades, Giannina Segnini has been both a fearless reporter, and an innovator. She has taught investigative journalism at the Universidad de Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica, and was until recently the editor of the investigative unit at La Nación, Costa Rica’s most influential newspaper.
Segnini has earned many honors, including a 2005 Special Citation from the Cabot Prizes for her courageous investigative stories unveiling corruption and bribery scandals that led to the arrest of two former Costa Rican presidents. She studied mass communications at the University of Costa Rica, and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University from 2001-02.
Her work has also inspired a new generation of Latin American investigative journalists. Since 2000, she has trained hundreds of journalists on investigative skills and computer-assisted reporting. She pioneered database investigations, and shares her knowledge throughout Latin America and around the world. Segnini is the James Madison Visiting Assistant Professor at Columbia Journalism School for the 2014-2015 academic year.
Segnini is currently James Madison Visiting Assistant Professor of Journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University.
Until February 2014, she was leading a team of journalists and computer engineers fully dedicated to unfold investigative stories by analyzing and visualizing public databases.
For the last decade, Segnini has been a speaker at high-level international conferences on investigative journalism, such as the Global Investigative Journalism Conference, the International Anti-Corruption Conference held by Transparency International, the International Press Institute (IPI), the News World Summit and the Latin American Conference on Investigative Journalism
Since 1994, Segnini has led the Investigative Unit at La Nación, highly recognized for its impact, of more than fifty criminal cases against politicians, businessmen and officials have been originated by its revelations.
She left La Nacion in February of this year.
Sources: Columbia Universtiy; Linked in; La Nacion
