VOLT DATA LAB is a journalism-support organization (JSO), providing data-driven investigations, research, news stories, visualizations, interactives, on-demand projects and training to media companies and NGOs.
VOLT is based in São Paulo, Brazil, but can work everywhere. We have developed dozens of projects with different organizations over the years:
Investigative Journalism: The agency conducts investigations based on public data, seeking to bring more transparency to government, political debate, and public policies.
Núcleo Jornalismo: In January 2020, Volt Data Lab founded Núcleo, a journalistic outlet dedicated to producing investigations from public data.
Collaborations with Major Media: The agency has partnerships with important media outlets, such as Folha de S.Paulo, BBC Brasil, Intercept Brasil, and Poder360.
Social Impact Project: VOLT also develops the Atlas da Notícia (News Atlas): A mapping of journalistic content-producing outlets in Brazil.
Investigative Journalism: The agency conducts investigations based on public data, seeking to bring more transparency to government, political debate, and public policies.
Núcleo Jornalismo: In January 2020, Volt Data Lab founded Núcleo, a journalistic outlet dedicated to producing investigations from public data.
Collaborations with Major Media: The agency has partnerships with important media outlets, such as Folha de S.Paulo, BBC Brasil, Intercept Brasil, and Poder360.
Social Impact Project: VOLT also develops the Atlas da Notícia (News Atlas): A mapping of journalistic content-producing outlets in Brazil.
Our history
CREATED AS A BLOG IN LATE 2014, VOLT DATA LAB has evolved into an independent journalism agency focused on investigation, analysis, and data visualization, developing projects across various areas such as politics, economy, human rights, media, and technology.
One of our main projects, "Conta dos Passaralhos" (The Layoff Counter), which tracks journalist layoffs in Brazil since 2012, led to partnership requests, service inquiries, and other opportunities. This sparked the idea to transform Volt into a journalism agency that produces data-driven content.
Our experience is extensive: we have produced investment reports, sector analyses, daily news coverage, investigative pieces, and special features; created databases and advanced interactive visualizations; conducted public budget analyses and provided training courses for communicators, among other activities.
From the beginning, the idea was always to be an initiative that produced original content in a broad, general context. No topic was off the table, no subject too far out of reach for us to tackle. Segmenting our original content was never our focus.
The business evolved and we saw growing demand for our services. As providers of content, analysis, and technology for the communication sector, being versatile is crucial to our model: whatever partners, newsrooms, NGOs, and other agencies and clients commission us to do, we do it, as long as it respects journalistic ethics and our area of expertise. It's that simple.
But as our followers know, we also have our own editorial side, with stories that originate internally and result in original and independent content, even when published with partners.
We've found that after producing various reports on wide-ranging topics, from politics and economics to health and judiciary, VOLT's true calling has always gravitated toward themes centered around technology and media.