Juan Gómez

Juan Gómez is a 28-year-old Colombian investigative journalist and a fellow at the Berlin Scholarship Program. He also focuses on the innovation of digital tools for the democratisation of journalism, such as maps, timelines, relationship graphs, etc., which visualize databases and allow people to easily identify helpful information and contribute to it.

2014 Juan co-founded the digital media outlet Rutas del Conflicto (Routes of Conflict) which has contributed to the construction of public consultation tools and in-depth reports on the Colombian armed conflict and its memoirs. To this day Juan works for Rutas del Conflicto as the deputy editor and has integrated techniques from data and citizen journalism in his work. With the help of a network of journalists, students of journalism and human sciences, volunteers as well as war survivors, Juan creates databases and other digital tools to consult information related to human rights violations, initiatives of memory and peacebuilding in Colombia.

At the Universidad del Rosario in Bogotá, Juan has taught subjects like “Reporting Methods” and “Analysis and Visualisation of Data”. Through his Fundación Con Lupa (The Magnifying Glass Foundation) and other allied organisations, he carries out workshops on communication and journalism tools with communities of survivors of armed violence.

His work has been recognized as a finalist or winner of awards such as the Data Journalism Awards (in 2017 and 2019), The Sigma Awards (2021) and the ¡Investiga! – a Colombian national investigative prize (in 2017 and 2019).

Since the latest Peace Agreement in Colombia (2016), Juan has covered its implementation as a reporter and editor at La Paz en el Terreno, an alliance between Rutas del Conflicto and the project “Colombia+20” of El Espectador, the oldest and the second-largest newspaper in the country, and finally the German foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in Colombia (FESCOL).