by Lise Olsen

Twenty leading journalists gathered in Mexico City on Feb. 18 to exchange information and discuss ways that Investigative Reporters & Editors can continue helping reporters who, under pressure and often at great personal risk, continue to do investigative reporting on transnational (U.S. – Mexico) topics such as cartel violence, wasteful government spending, political corruption, and the economic and social costs of the war on drugs. The event was the fifth in a series of bilingual workshops that IRE conducted from 2009 -2012, which were supported in part by grants from the Ford Foundation. To discuss next steps, IRE ...

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By Hilary Niles
@nilesmedia

Spain is an “information black hole,” journalist Mar Cabra said during the Against All -Spanish- Odds. She and software developer David Cabo are taking suggestions on how to fix that. 

Among the European countries with a population more than 1 million, Cabra said, Spain is the only one not to have freedom of information laws. On the technical side, David Cabo described what this looks like for people working with data (if they can get it):

1. Administrations love PDF files and generally refuse to hand over raw data, text or Excel files
2. There is little consistency ...

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Surviving rickshaw "bumper cars" and helping local journalists gain data analysis tools were all in a week’s work for IRE Executive Director Mark Horvit and Training Director Jaimi Dowdell, who recently returned from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

"What was nice about the training was how quickly a lot of the journalists seemed to see the value of using the tools," Horvit said. "Several of them were already talking about potential story ideas or ways they could use this to go back and do stories."

The training was similar to IRE's computer-assisted reporting seminars conducted in the the U.S. Horvit ...

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(Washington) — During the past year and a half, more than twenty experienced reporters and news executives have mentored Fund for Investigative Journalism (FIJ) grantees, lending a hand in the reporting, writing and editing of their work.

The executive director of Investigative Reporters & Editors, Mark Horvit, recruits the mentors from the roster of IRE members. In so doing, he has lined up some ...

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Collaborative watchdog group follows the funds for rebuilding

When a massive earthquake killed some 200,000 people and devastated Haiti, billions of aid dollars poured in from aroundthe globe. Groups such as “God’s Pit Crew” and “Drops of Hope”descended on the island, ostensibly to help people rebuild their lives.

Although many of us in Haiti had lost friends, family, homes and offices, a group of Haitian journalists banded together soon after thedisaster to follow the money to make sure it really was offering hope.

A student journalist questions a man about his son’s case of cholera at ...

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The central African country of Chad includes what some call the most beautiful, untouched wilderness areas in the continent—Zakouma National Park. The park is one of the last safe refuges for elephants in the continent. Poachers continue to hunt them for their ivory. National Geographic joined with the park’s rangers for a story called "Ivory Wars" and tracked the elephant’s movements, set up cameras throughout the park and documented the deaths of elephants in the area. The story is a perfect example of how creating your own database can add context and depth to reporting. It could ... Read more ...

President Bush has called Iran part of an "axis of evil" and accused it of helping terrorists, meddling in Iraq and trying to develop nuclear weapons. I decided to see whether Bush's tough rhetoric was reflected in the United States’ exports to Iran. Bush has been pressing the United Nations and European Union to impose tougher sanctions on Iran, but he hasn’t pursued stronger U.S.-only limits on trade. I analyzed U.S. trade data from Bush’s first seven years in office and found that exports to Iran grew more than tenfold. In addition to the ...

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