Years before María Teresa Ronderos founded the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (El CLIP) as a hub for cross-border investigative reporting, she saw an acute need for a kind of “service center” to support and coordinate the work of investigative journalists across Latin America.
In founding CLIP in 2019 alongside several colleagues, Ronderos sought to fill two distinct gaps. While transnational reporting did exist in Latin America before CLIP, there was no central organisation to coordinate reporting on stories that transcended national borders, creating a sort of information vacuum. As Ronderos put it during an interview with IPI, “there were too many problems going beyond borders that no one was seeing”.
In creating CLIP, Ronderos aimed to bring together investigative journalists across Latin America to tackle stories far bigger than any one country. In the years since its founding, CLIP has evolved into a permanent coordination centre helping Latin America’s journalists connect the dots across the region’s biggest social, economic, and political issues. In Ronderos’s view, “cross-border investigative reporting tells whole truths”.
Ronderos also wanted to strengthen the infrastructure supporting investigative journalism in Latin America. Prior to CLIP’s creation, most of the region’s investigative journalists operated on small teams with limited budgets. Through CLIP, many of these journalists now have access to a robust support network providing the technical and legal expertise often necessary to undertake major journalistic investigations.
With more than 150 journalistic partners across the region — and the world — CLIP has emerged as a powerful counterweight to an increasingly fraught information environment in Latin America. As its mission statement says, “in the sea of confusing information that is the Internet, we seek to ensure that our allied and concurrent publications are seen, felt, interact with people, and produce changes.”
A pioneering ethos
In addition to its mission to coordinate and amplify reporting across Latin America, CLIP also functions as an investigative newsroom. CLIP’s team of journalists and media outlets from the region regularly conduct collaborative, data-driven investigations on topics such as organised crime, corruption, and abuses of power with the aim of driving accountability across borders.
By leveraging digital tools and shared platforms — created by and for journalists — CLIP’s work has broken through today’s crowded online spaces, providing accessible and comprehensive reporting on the most pressing issues facing the region. One of CLIP’s most successful innovations has been the creation of NINA, a central platform connecting databases across 21 Latin American countries. In developing NINA, Ronderos sought to facilitate the flow of information, and inspire journalistic investigations in the public interest.
NINA has had a transformative effect on delivering large-scale cross-border investigations, providing critical data underpinning reports on lithium-related conflicts in Chile and Argentina and election abuses in the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Ecuador. CLIP’s team is now in the process of developing AI agents that can do research within NINA, which Ronderos hopes will streamline investigations even further.
Navigating new threats
CLIP’s mission to promote the production of reliable reporting on some of the biggest issues facing Latin America has taken on even greater importance as threats to independent journalism grow in the region.
As threats intensify, CLIP has expanded its focus beyond collaborative reporting to helping journalists work more safely. “We have become much more savvy about improving the conditions of security and safety,” Ronderos emphasised. CLIP has developed a digital security “checklist” for journalists, which covers everything from protecting sources and personal data to guidance on physical and legal security.
CLIP has also had to evolve to combat an information environment increasingly clouded by disinformation and propaganda. A major breakthrough for Ronderos was a CLIP investigation published in 2023 on the role of digital mercenaries in weaponising major digital platforms to manipulate public opinion and sow discord in the service of political agendas. The project “really showed how disinformation worked, and how people were — 24/7 — devoted to disinform, as a profession,” Ronderos explained.
These challenges are unfolding against a broader backdrop of democratic backsliding across the region. As a growing number of countries in Latin America slip toward authoritarianism, CLIP has been forced to adapt to a political climate increasingly hostile to public interest reporting. In Ronderos’s view, “the problem with polarisation is that people don’t know who to believe”. Amid these difficult conditions, Ronderos believes CLIP’s ability to cut across countries and ideological divides actually enhances the credibility of its unique brand of investigative journalism.
CLIP’s collective strength, as a large network of independent journalists, also serves as an added protective measure for journalists pursuing politically sensitive stories. “When you work on difficult investigative stories, it’s very hard to do it on your own,” Ronderos said. “But when you have a network that has your back, that supports you…it shields us in these difficult times.”
About the Free Media Pioneer Award
The IPI-IMS Free Media Pioneer Award is presented annually to organisations or media communities meeting the demands of the moment through innovative models of journalism, media, or press freedom defence.
The 2026 recipients of the Free Media Pioneer Award are the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism (El CLIP) and Abzas Media and Meydan TV (Azerbaijan). The 2026 recipients were drawn from a global shortlist of organisations from around the world that have been true trailblazers in opening up new frontiers for the free flow of news and information in their countries and regions.
The 2025 recipient of the Free Media Pioneer Award was Hungary’s independent media in recognition of their innovation, adaptation, and endurance under sustained political and economic pressure. Other past recipients include Kloop (Kyrgyzstan), Myanmar Now, and Rappler (Philippines). See all past Free Media Pioneer Award recipients.
This year’s awards will be presented together with the IPI-IMS World Press Freedom Hero Award at a special event at this year’s Gabo Festival (July 24-26, Bogotá, Colombia), the leading event for journalists in Ibero-America.