Current Title: Web Developer/Designer
Organization: International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
Country: United States
Twitter: @antoniocuga
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/antoniocuga
SND Statement
When I was thirteen years old, I remember telling some friends “I hate the news” and repeatedly saying that to myself for the next few years while I was in high school back in Peru in 2003. Everyday, I walked through every “kiosko” (newsstand) and tried to understand who and how the information on those newspapers was chosen.
As a Peruvian teenager, I was trying to understand what was going on, because as a country, we were ending ten years of dictatorship and there were many corruption scandals going around. TV stations owners were being detained for taking bribes to frequently intervene in “news” decisions. I definitely kept true to my instincts in not believing the newspapers, not even the TV.
In 2005, I got my first computer, which was a big effort from my family to keep me out of trouble and from spending a lot of money going to the “cabinas” (cyber cafes).
Right away, I started looking for the news websites available in our region. I was amazed by the amount of news around the world. Each website was very different, difficult to navigate, very colorful and slow, but I could choose what to read and compare those news pieces between the sites. I quickly understood that anyone could publish something on the internet and I began to study and learn how to make things publishable on the network. I started to learn a wide set of skills to create my own stuff on the internet. I was very interested in communication and I didn’t “hate the news” anymore, but I hated the way it was presented, often in long narratives without much sense, low-quality pictures (especially with bandwidth being an issue in underdeveloped countries), overly-colorful links, confusing navigations and many many many ads.
By the age of eighteen, I got my first job as a web developer. I started to create web platforms for institutions that wanted to show tons of information to their users. I was definitely on the right path. Years later, I got my first dream job on the digital team of one of the biggest newspapers in Peru. I found myself lost in a different world where the web developers were excluded from the newsroom, and we only built whatever the owners and directors wanted to show with little consideration into the user experience and reader’s priority. There was zero interest in experimenting with new news formats and new ways of reporting. I didn’t stay for too long.
I started a new path in my career and I chose to be a digital news designer (a non-existent career back in those times in Peru). I joined every hackathon I could in those days and started teaching programming courses while I was looking for a new opportunity. After a few months, I decided that I want to run a new data literacy community. I joined forces with the local civic hacker community and, taking advantage of the rise of the open data movement around the world, I founded my own project to teach journalists and any curious citizens about data visualization and web design in Lima.
I founded the Open Data Peru community, where I successfully ran workshops around the country. At that time, I was also selected in the School of Data fellowship, a data literacy program to work with different Latin American newsrooms and dozens of journalists. I was so happy to collaborate with a new generation of journalists, mostly communication students interested in learning about new formats, data visualization and applications to serve their audiences. In 2014, while I was running a workshop, I met new participants who were very interested in my work, which led me to be one of the co-founders of Ojo Público, an independent investigative news media outlet in Peru. There we built the first news electoral platform to explore public affidavits of candidates running for major offices in Lima. Together with the Ojo Público team, we applied to run the Hacks/Hackers Lima chapter, boosting our training sessions with help of international experts and putting our country on the radar of the news design community.
It wasn’t long before I decided to go international with my web development pursuits. I joined Univision Communications in Miami in 2016 to create several data visualization pieces for their digital news platform and TV broadcasting. And in 2018, I got another dream job at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, where I was hired to create, design and serve digital narratives and news applications to bring different user experiences to our award-winning investigations. After six years of working in the U.S. news industry I’ve experienced many different ways to engage and create better digital experiences for readers.
I always feel challenged at ICIJ. We lead major investigations in coordination with dozens of news media outlets around the globe who are always expecting us to serve them with a full kit of visual journalistic pieces and flexible assets in every project. As the sole web designer and developer on the editorial team, I need to consider the different audiences and web capacities of our international journalism partners to create an accurate, fair and shareable design for their sites. After a long journey and having experienced working in award-winning cross borders investigative projects, building civic technology and journalist communities, I feel comfortable and ready to support a new mission.
I’ve long admired the work of the Society for News Design, a very respectable institution that has led the mission of promoting the best visual journalism around the world. I want to put all my experience into work to grow as a community, promoting SND’s values and encouraging many other folks to keep innovating and creating valuable pieces that can make a difference in the world. SND’s aspirations are my aspirations. Today I want to commit to creating a strong and diverse community where we all feel included, putting our creativity, courage and values together to make SND an organization for more opportunities.
My old mantra of “I hate the news” is something that I always keep in mind, especially at a time when it seems more and more people around the world hate and distrust the news. Let’s work together to make it better.
Bio
Antonio Cucho Gamboa, Peruvian web developer and web designer. Antonio currently works at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in the Editorial and Product team since 2018. Previously at Data and Investigation and Data Graphics team of Univision News (2016-2018, Miami, FL, U S.), News Apps Developer of Ojo Publico (2014-2016, Lima, Peru) and Web Developer of La Republica Digital (2011-2013, Lima, Peru)
Antonio works and volunteers for different news media outlets around the globe. As a hacktivist, he led and helped to organize groups of data literacy and civic technology focused on working with the journalists community in Latin America with the School of Data, Open Data Peru and Hacks/Hackers.