In April 2016, media outlets from over 80 countries simultaneously published the Panama Papers, a year-long investigation built on 11.5 million leaked documents. For that to be possible, journalists from rival media outlets had to learn to share what they knew. One of the people who made that coordination work began her career at a newspaper in the province of Mendoza.
Today, Marina Walker Guevara is the Executive Editor of the Pulitzer Center and applies that same method to another global story: the power behind artificial intelligence. She will be one of the keynote speakers at Media Party Buenos Aires 2026, from October 29 to 31 at Ciudad Cultural Konex.
The shared scoop
Her journey began at Los Andes, the Mendoza-based newspaper. In 2002, an Alfred Friendly Press Partners fellowship took her to The Philadelphia Inquirer, at a time when she had never written an article in English or lived outside her home country. This was followed by a master’s degree at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and an internship at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), where she ultimately became deputy director.
That was when she co-managed the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, the two largest collaborations in the history of journalism. Her contribution was not merely organizational. She helped build a working model based on an unusual idea in investigative journalism: sharing findings with the competition in order to multiply the impact. She described it as moving “from the vulnerability of the lone wolf to the strength of the pack.” In 2017, the Panama Papers team, of which she was one of the leaders, won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting.
Investigating those who build AI
Long before the current AI boom, Walker Guevara was already studying its potential for journalism. Between 2018 and 2019, during her time as a John S. Knight fellow at Stanford, she analyzed how these tools could facilitate investigations based on massive volumes of data. At the Pulitzer Center, where she took over as executive editor in 2020, she expanded that perspective toward a different question: how to investigate the impact of AI itself.
Along those lines, in 2022 the Pulitzer Center launched the AI Accountability Network, which supports journalists from different countries in their investigations into the impact of algorithms and automated systems on people’s lives. When presenting it, Walker Guevara argued that this is not just a technology story, but also one of equity and accountability. The network is currently developing its fifth cohort of fellows, made up of nine journalists from five continents. According to the Pulitzer Center, investigations by previous cohorts helped drive new legislation in Brazil and provided evidence used in judicial proceedings.
Her analysis of the current scenario is critical. In an article published in April, she warned that major tech companies are pushing a strategy of financing and outreach to media outlets in Latin America, aiming to accelerate the adoption of AI and access their journalistic archives. Faced with this outlook, she maintains that questioning the idea that AI’s advancement is inevitable requires boldness and independent judgment. For Walker Guevara, this task falls especially on journalists working collaboratively, across borders and disciplines.
A necessary voice to reflect on cognitive sovereignty
Media Party Buenos Aires is organized under the theme “Storytelling in the era of agents” and proposes defending cognitive sovereignty: the ability to think, editorialize, and decide without delegating judgment to a machine. Walker Guevara’s trajectory adds a key dimension to that debate. It is not enough to use technology well: someone has to closely watch those who control it.
Alongside other keynote speakers like Caspar Llewellyn Smith of The Guardian, her presence rounds out an agenda that looks at AI both from inside newsrooms and from an investigative standpoint. For journalists, editors, data teams, and media managers, it is an opportunity to listen to someone who turned collaboration into a method and is now putting it at the service of the biggest story of our time.
From October 29 to 31, journalism that investigates AI also has a place at Media Party Buenos Aires 2026
Ciudad Cultural Konex. Register here to be a part of it.
