Guardian’s Simon Rogers wins award for statistical excellence in journalism

The Guardian’s Simon Rogers has won the online category in the the Royal Statistical Society’s (RSS) annual journalism awards.

Rogers, who is editor of the Guardian’s Datablog and Datastore, has been named one of the three winners of the awards for statistical excellence in journalism.

Earlier this year the Guardian’s Datastore and Datablog celebrated both its three-year anniversary and reaching just over one million users a month on average for the past year for the first time.

Last year Rogers received the inaugural City University XCity award, which recognises a former student for “an outstanding contribution to journalism in terms of making a difference in the way news and features are written or presented”.

In the 2012 awards, journalists at the Financial Times and the BBC have also been recognised for their work.

The awards, now in their sixth year, are made in three categories – print, broadcast and online.

The winner for work published in print is Chris Giles of the Financial Times for his news article, ‘£12bn hole threatens plans to cut the deficit’ and accompanying analysis, ‘Growth picture clouded by spare capacity doubts’.

It is the second time that Chris Giles has been successful in the awards. He won in 2008 in the then combined print/online category. Also in this year’s print category, the judges decided Giles’ FT colleague, Christopher Cook, should be specially commended for his article ‘White Plight’.

In the broadcast category, a BBC team is the overall winner for its news piece on the world’s population as it topped seven billion.

The judges also felt that Radio 4’s More or Less should be formally commended for its broadcast examining the figures behind media stories on women becoming pregnant when using a particular contraceptive implant. More or Less won in the broadcast category in 2010 and was commended in 2011.

Honorary officer for the Society’s external relations work, Professor Stephen Senn, said:

This year saw a record number of entries to our awards for statistical excellence in journalism.

Many showed particularly good use of statistics and data, which presented the judges with a very difficult task in choosing who should win or be specially commended.

Presentations will be made to winners at an awards ceremony being held as part of the RSS’s annual conference in Telford on 4 September.

The RSS established the awards in 2007 to encourage excellence in journalists’ use of statistics to question analyse and investigate the issues that affect society at large.