Átló

2023

Entry type: Portfolio

Country/area: Hungary

Publishing organisation: Átló

Organisation size: Small

Cover letter:

Átló was launched in 2018 by Átlátszó, the first centre for investigative journalism in Hungary, with the aim of creating a platform for data-based visual journalism in Hungary. Initially, it was an experiment, we wanted to see if we could adapt the ideas and solutions of the best in the field to the Hungarian environment. Since then, we have produced eighty projects, ranging from factual investigative pieces to historical, sports, scientific, health and climate-related topics. The team currently consists of three people, with many occasional contributors. Átló is currently still the only platform of its kind in Hungary. In addition to articles and projects, we also produce educational and scientific outreach work, and the materials of our lectures and workshops are available free of charge on our website.

Description of portfolio:

This year we are submitting our 2022 portfolio. We were expecting a busy year because of the elections, and this year it was also our biggest and most complex work. With our elections site, we not only offered visitors continously updated content for the April elections, but also processed data for all parliamentary elections since 2006. You can see the results in more than a hundred graphics on the site. On election day, we had hundreds of thousands of readers, and most of the opinions said our content was the most comprehensive, complex and understandable in Hungary. We have also made all the data we used and processed available for download. This year’s important investigative piece, which has been covered on television and radio channels too, was about the creation, operation and finances of the pro-government Facebook empire. What makes it special is that the investigation and research was carried out by a media researcher and a sociologist. Also an example of collaboration with academics is the Lutheran Network, which we produced with two well known historians. It is about the inhuman deportation of the Hungarian population after the First World War from the county of Szepes, what is now in Slovakia. Our public service work this year was a map of teachers’ protests, which we updated over months with parents sympathetic to the teachers’ desperate plight. The impact can be illustrated by the fact that many teachers in many schools decided to take part in the civil disobedience after seeing the map. Our long-standing wish has come true by finally collecting in one place the small, static, uniformly designed graphics we created for our mother, Átlátszó. Alongside these, we helped Budapest and the small 18th district to explore snippets of its history, and we also produced a piece on the history of Formula 1 and the history of football World Cup.