Eight IRE members filed for the 2008 Board of Directors election in time to be listed on the absentee ballot. Seven seats will be up for vote at the 2008 IRE Conference in Miami.
The candidates are: incumbent Wendell Cochran, American University; incumbent Manny Garcia of The Miami Herald; incumbent Dianna Hunt of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram; Rhonda Schwartz of ABC News; Mc Nelly Torres of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel; Lawan Williams of KSHB-Kansas City, Mo,; Phil Williams of WTVF-Nashville; incumbent Duff Wilson, The New York Times. See their statements online at www.ire.org/boardelections.
Filing is still open for additional candidates; statements will be posted as they are received.
To request an absentee ballot, e-mail ballot@ire.org. More details on declaring candidacy or voting.
IRE has launched the Robert W. Greene Fellowship Fund for Young Journalists to honor the legendary Arizona Project leader and Newsday editor, who died on April 10.
The fund, designed with Greene's approval last year, will support full-time students studying journalism and professionals under the age of 30 who need assistance to attend IRE conferences, seminars and other training. Fellows will receive an IRE membership and have travel, lodging and registration fees covered. The fellows also will get the opportunity to meet with veteran journalists who will take the time to work with them individually - just as Bob had.
Please visit www.ire.org/bob_greene to learn more about the man known as IRE's godfather and add a story or memory of Greene to our guest book. The May-June issue of The IRE Journal will contain more about his legacy.
If you wish to make a donation to the Robert W. Greene fund online, please visit http://www.ire.org/bobgreenefund.html (Please type "Bob Greene Fund" in the "general notes" field.) Or you may send a check made out to "IRE" with "Bob Greene Fund" in the memo line to the following address: Investigative Reporters and Editors, Attn: Heather Henry, Fiscal Officer, 138 Neff Annex, Missouri School of Journalism, Columbia, MO 65211
If you have any questions about the fund, please contact IRE development officer Jennifer Erickson at 573- 884-2222 or jennifer@ire.org; IRE executive director Mark Horvit at 573-882-1984 or mhorvit@ire.org; or Brant Houston at (217-0333-7554 or brant.houston@gmail.com.
Spread the word about IRE's new freelance fellowships. April 30 is the application deadline for the first round of fellowships, which will provide $1,000 or more to support investigative projects.
Proposals will be judged by an independent panel of three freelance journalists. At the request of the anonymous donor who provided $55,000 to create these fellowships, proposals dealing with whistleblowers, business ethics and/or privacy issues will receive priority; projects involving other topics will be given serious consideration by the committee as well. The freelance projects must be published or aired primarily in U.S. outlets. Applications are available at www.ire.org/training/fellowships.html.
Database producer
Chicago Tribune Interactive
Freelance Investigative Journalist
A North American research company
Research Director
MAPlight.org
Online Database Coordinator
The Tulsa World
Tulsa, Okla.
Make history at the 10th Anniversary Blues Bash! Join your IRE colleagues and the ghost of Al Capone on Thursday, June 5 — the opening night of the 2008 Conference in Miami – for a party you’ll never forget.
This year’s headliner will be The Albert Castiglia Band, led by the best unknown blues slinger you’ve never heard. Castiglia was lead guitarist for the late Chicago blues great Junior Wells. Now on his own, Castiglia is ready to leap back into the national spotlight with his upcoming CD, “These are the Days.” For more info, visit www.albertcastiglia.com.
But that’s not all. This year, two stellar supporting acts will try to steal the show: JP Soars & the Redhots, winner of 2008 South Florida Blues Society Challenge, and the Gypsy Blue Acoustic Review, an intriguing ensemble that features a gypsy jazz genre popularized by Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt in the 1930s and 1940s.
To showcase this sizzling music from these three hot acts, we’ve booked Tobacco Road – the coolest venue in Dade County history. (Read a profile from a Miami nightlife Web site.)The music will alternate from stages on Tobacco Road’s Outdoor Patio and Upstairs Cabaret starting at 7:30 p.m.
All of this fun benefits a great cause. The Blues Bash has contributed nearly $27,000 to the IRE Resource Center – the place to call when you need clips, videotapes, tipsheets, recordings of conference panels and other reference materials from IRE’s vast archive.
We expect another sold-out show this year, building on our history of great shows featuring Canned Heat, Guitar Shorty, W.C. Clark, Eddie Shaw, Sandra Hall, Lady Bianca, Luther “Houserocker” Johnson, Walter “Wolfman” Washington and other top blues artists.
Don’t miss out! Buy your ticket online (available via th econference registration form) while you still can at the early-bird price of $20. Limit two per conference registrant.
-- Mark Lagerkvist, Blues Bash organizer and former IRE Board member
It's time to make plans to attend the 2008 IRE Conference, June 5-8. The deadline for early registration is May 19 and the hotel block at the InterContinental Miami is nearly full.
May 9-10, 2008 — New York, N.Y.
Ethnic Media Watchdog Workshop
May 10-11, 2008 — Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
Money in Politics Workshop
May 17-18, 2008 — Chicago, Ill.
Ethnic Media Watchdog Workshop
May 18-23, 2008 — Columbia, Mo.
Computer-Assisted Reporting Boot Camp
Q&A with Agustin Armendariz,
Web Frameworks Boot Camp alum
Agustin Armendariz, self-described “data monkey” for the San Diego Union-Tribune, offered his impression of the first Frameworks Mini-Boot Camp held at the 2008 CAR Conference in Houston. His job includes computer-assisted reporting tasks for the newsroom, as well as moving popular databases to the Web for both internal and public use.
IRE will offer the second round of its all-new Web Frameworks Mini-Boot Camp on the optional CAR day (Thurs., June 5) in Miami. Up to 15 participants will learn the latest tools for moving data to the Web to create versatile online tools using multiple sets of data. See details
For Armendariz, the hands-on introduction to Django, a framework used by sites such as Politifact and EveryBlock, helped confirm that these were the tools he needed.
“You really do have a lot more access, a lot more granular access, a lot quicker access,” he said in a recent phone interview. “It manages the integrity of your data while also giving you better access to it.”
Django also is compatible with the paper’s new content management system, called Ellington, so he and colleagues had already started experimenting with it.
Q. Why did you sign up?
A. I really wanted to go there to hear smart guys like [instructors Derek Willis and Aron Pilhofer of nytimes.com and Matt Waite of The St. Petersburg Times] talk about how to use it. That was kind of like the ‘Aha!’ moment. When you hear them talk about it, it makes a lot more sense, and I didn’t have anyone around here to do that. They speak our language. When I say things to Aron and Derek, I might not make sense, but they can still make sense of it, hopefully.
Q. How much can you learn about frameworks in a few boot camp sessions?
A. I think it’s too much to think you can master it. … I would compare it to the Perl classes that John Perry taught [at CAR conferences]. I went to those and had no idea what was going on. But now I use Perl all the time, pretty much daily. You’re not going to master it all at once, but the more you hear people talk about it, the quicker you’re going to master it.
Q. Who is this workshop useful for?
A. I think it's useful for people that are managing a lot of data on a daily basis and need to make the data available to reporters and readers. But if you're not going to dive off the deep end on data stuff, then it's not gonna be very useful to you.
Q. Was it easier or more complex than you expected?
A. It’s still pretty complex as far as I’m concerned. I still don’t understand the templating language [used to display selected data]. The models are not a problem. For the view syntax, I think Ben Welsh [of the Los Angeles Times] did a really good job of walking us through ‘Here’s what the SQL looks like now this is what the Python [script] looks like.’
Q. What are you doing to maintain your skills?
A. It’s mostly a hobby right now. I try to populate these models with data that I have.
[A model is] you’re just writing down what the fields are in your tables and how it relates to the other tables. It’s very much like building tables in Access, and you’re just creating those fields and telling it what data fields are there. Eventually, I’ll move over to the views, then try to work the templates to put something useful on the Web. It’s kind of baby steps.