ABC News has taken the overall prize at the prestigious international Information is Beautiful awards in London, named the best in the world at data visualisation and digital storytelling.
The ABC won the top award for Most Outstanding Outfit for excellence across its portfolio of stories, which were created by the ABC News Story Lab and the Digital Story Innovations team.
The awards celebrate excellence and beauty in data visualisation, infographics, interactives and information art.
“The ABC has a long history of harnessing the power of creativity and the craft of storytelling to bring important stories to life on Australian screens,” said Director, News Gaven Morris.
“Its investment in digital storytelling through the work of the ABC News Story Lab and Digital Story Innovations team has been crucial to bringing that tradition to life in innovative new formats and on new devices.
“These awards recognise important new skills our teams have developed in data journalism and visualisation, digital storytelling, design and software development, which allow them to deliver personalised and interactive editorial experiences that could never have been imagined even a few years ago.
“Those skills will be crucial as the ABC endeavours to deliver powerful, creative and insightful stories to our audiences for years to come.”
Each year hundreds of infographics, interactive digital stories and data visualisations are submitted for judging by the world’s most respected data visualisation experts, visual journalists and digital storytellers.
Entries are judged on how well they suit the medium and how well they illuminate topics including news, politics, culture, sport and science.
This year’s longlist of nominated stories included entries from the Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, The Guardian, NBC News, Al Jazeera and last year’s overall winner, global news agency Reuters.
Check out the ABC stories making up the portfolio judged to be the best in the world:
• How life has changed for people your age by ABC News Story Lab (Catherine Hanrahan, Joshua Byrd, Ben Spraggon and Matt Liddy)
• Rich School, Poor School: Australia’s Great Education Divide by ABC News Digital Story Innovations team (Inga Ting, Alex Palmer, Nathanael Scott and Ri Liu)
• How hard is it to make a believable deepfake video? by ABC News Story Lab (Tim Leslie, Nathan Hoad, Ben Spraggon and Matt Liddy)
• Counting The Cost Of The Education Revolution by ABC News Digital Story Innovations team (Inga Ting, Ri Liu and Nathanael Scott)
• Super Kamiokande by ABC News Story Lab (Jake Sturmer, Yumi Asada, Ben Spraggon, Colin Gourlay, Josh Byrd, Matt Martino, Cristen Tilley and Matt Liddy)
The ABC’s Digital Story Innovations team also took the bronze award in the News and Current Affairs category for its story, Rich school, poor school, a deep examination of Australia’s great education divide. The story was reported by data journalist Inga Ting and produced by designer Alex Palmer and developers Nathanael Scott and Ri Liu.