EL PAÍS Brazil wins two awards from the Inter American Press Association

EL PAÍS Brazil , the Portuguese-language edition of El País based in São Paulo and aimed at Brazilian readers, has won two awards at the 2016 Inter American Press Association (IAPA) Awards.

The first, in the category of Human Rights and Community Service, went to the series of reports published by EL PAÍS Brazil in December 2014 following the findings of the Comissão da Verdade, that is, the set of testimonies and revelations on the crimes of the Brazilian dictatorship. The jury praised "the synthesis, direct language and deep human impact of the personal stories" of the reports, published by El Pais Brazil, and written by a number of reporters on the paper’s news team.

The second prize was in the category for Opinion pieces. El País Brazil collaborator Eliane Brum was honored for an article entitled A mais damn das Heranças do PT(The cursed legacy of the Workers Party) The jury praised Brum for "elegant and engaging writing, that describes the crisis in the PT and, in general, that of the Brazilian left, and for sparking intense debate both online and in other publications."

"Of the great many stories we've covered in EL PAÍS Brazil, this series on the Comissão da verdade is the one we’re proudest of," said the editor-in-chief of EL PAÍS Brazil, Antonio Jiménez Barca. "Maybe it’s because we did it all together, each of us working on a part of a document that had thousands of shocking pages. It was a real collective endeavor."

EL PAÍS Brazil began publication in November 2013 and was the largest professional and business venture the newspaper had undertaken since its founding. Despite its youth, it has quickly set the standard for news and journalism in the country. Circulation has gone from strength to strength with each major event covered by its journalists: from the World Cup 2014, to street demonstrations against the government of Dilma Rousseff in 2015 to the impeachment of the president of this year. The newspaper has won praise for tackling issues all too often ignored by other media in Brazil, such as indigenous issues and extreme poverty. It has garnered widespread praise from intellectuals and figures such as Renato Janine, Education Minister of the previous government, and Juca Ferreira, Minister of Culture. Its audience, of around four million unique users per month according to latest ComScore figures, makes it the seventh most read media outlet in the country.