An investigative journalist leaps from print to digital

Oscar Castilla: "You have to think about the business model"

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Oscar Castilla spent 12 years at El Comercio, Peru's most important daily newspaper, honing his reporting skills with investigations of organized crime and corruption.

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Then in 2014, Castilla and some colleagues from the investigative unit decided to leave the paper for editorial reasons. "The editor at the time had one view of journalism and we had another," he told me in an interview. "We wanted to do some innovative things and the organization was against it."

So they decided to launch their own news publication online, Ojo Público (Public Eye). Their first investigation about conflicts of interest among the mayors in metropolitan Lima was honored in Barcelona in June with a Data Journalism Award from the Global Editors Network.
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