The Maldita.es Foundation has been selected as a finalist in the INMA Global Media Awards 2026, one of the most relevant international recognitions in media innovation. The organization is competing in the Best Innovation in Newsroom Transformation category with La Buloteca, a platform that transforms how disinformation is detected and verified by collaborating with audiences and using data to improve and accelerate newsroom processes and citizen response.
The INMA Global Media Awards, organized by the International News Media Association, have recognized for nearly 90 years the best initiatives in innovation, product development, audience engagement, and media transformation worldwide. In this edition, 960 projects from 274 media brands across 46 countries were submitted, with 200 finalists selected in 20 categories. Winners will be announced on May 7 in Berlin during the INMA World Congress of News Media.
In the Best Innovation in Newsroom Transformation category, the Maldita.es Foundation is competing with projects from international organizations such as Amedia (Norway), The Business Times (Singapore), Svenska Dagbladet (Sweden), and United Daily News Group (Taiwan), all presenting initiatives focused on the use of data, algorithms, and new editorial models to transform newsrooms.
Among the finalists across the competition are some of the world’s leading media groups, including The Guardian, News Corp, Schibsted, South China Morning Post, and The Wall Street Journal. In Spain, in addition to Maldita.es, Vocento is also nominated in another category.
La Buloteca: a new way to manage verification in the newsroom
The project for which the Maldita.es Foundation has been nominated is La Buloteca, a collaborative platform designed to transform and streamline verification management within the newsroom to respond to disinformation efficiently and transparently. The initiative was created to address the continuous growth of disinformation and the increasing number of inquiries sent by audiences to the organization. Through this platform, anyone can contribute clues about potentially misleading content circulating online to help the Maldita.es editorial team in its investigations.
La Buloteca redesigns the workflow of the Maldita.es newsroom by integrating community-submitted information, editorial decision-making, and data management into a single system. The platform promotes citizen participation while centralizing and organizing audience queries and tips, detecting recurring disinformation narratives, avoiding duplication, and prioritizing investigations based on their impact. In addition, it incorporates standardized verification statuses that allow each case to be tracked from detection to resolution, improving coordination between editorial, technology, and product teams.
The results of the initiative have led to a significant improvement in newsroom response capacity. In the first six months after its launch, Maldita.es published 720 articles and responses, representing a 15.3% increase in response capacity without increasing team size.
Impact was also reflected in audience reach: visits grew by 73.5% and active users increased by 80%, largely because responses are directly based on real questions submitted by the community.
Beyond quantitative results, La Buloteca has driven a cultural shift within the organization, moving from a model focused exclusively on publishing articles to a public service system based on continuously answering citizens’ questions and encouraging their collaboration in the fight against disinformation.
With this nomination, Maldita.es positions itself among international initiatives that are redefining how newsrooms can adapt to the current information ecosystem by integrating technology, citizen participation, and journalism to more effectively combat disinformation.