A major new resource for journalists is available online for the first time. IRE contest questionnaires provide road maps to how many of the best investigative projects of the past three decades were done.

IRE members can now digitally search more than 15,000 of these valuable guides.

Each questionnaire provides detail on how projects, entered into the IRE Awards and later the Phil Meyer Awards, were done. Each one includes lists of sources, documents and data; advice to those who'd like to try similar work themselves, detail on any CAR analysis done, and much more.

The collection -- which ...

We are pleased to announce that Elizabeth Lucas is joining IRE today as the new director of our National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR) Database Library.

Liz comes to IRE from the Center for Public Integrity, where she analyzed data for investigative projects on political, environmental and health topics. Among the projects she worked on was Poisoned Places, which won the Sigma Delta Chi award for Public Service journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists and was a finalist for the Goldsmith Prize and the IRE Award. 

She previously worked in the Database Library while getting her master's degree ...

Investigations that exposed major abuses and wrongdoing by law enforcement agencies and the failure of government to protect society’s most vulnerable members are among the work honored in the 2011 Investigative Reporters and Editors Awards.

Covering 15 categories across several media platforms and a range of market sizes, the IRE Awards recognize the most outstanding watchdog journalism of the year. The contest, which began in 1979, received over 430 entries this year. 

“Despite devastating cutbacks across the news business, investigative reporting is alive and well, and really making a difference in our society,” said Lea Thompson, contest committee co-chairwoman ...

Seven seats up for election on IRE board

The filing period has begun for those planning to run for the IRE board of directors. Seven seats on the 13-member board are up for election. The election will be held June 16 at the IRE annual conference in Boston.

The IRE board serves as the governing body of IRE and generally meets in person twice a year to discuss and vote on IRE business. One meeting is at the annual conference in June. The board periodically has conference calls. Directors serve on committees and task forces made up of board members ...

Investigative Reporters & Editors  was awarded $100,000 Monday to continue its Watchdog Workshop series. The Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation in Oklahoma City chose IRE and 18 other journalism organizations to receive a total of $1.5 million in grants. The foundation awarded more than $1 million of that to investigative reporting projects, including many programs run by IRE members.

"The Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation is playing a pivotal role in fostering investigative journalism," IRE Executive Director Mark Horvit said. "Citizens in communities throughout the country are better informed thanks to the foundation's work."

IRE’s Watchdog Workshop ...

Megan Luther joins IRE today as the newest member of our training team. She will work with training director Jaimi Dowdell to run our workshops, in-newsroom training and other initiatives.

Megan has worked in radio, TV and most recently, newspapers. Before she joined IRE, Megan was a government reporter for the Argus Leader in South Dakota and a computer-assisted reporting specialist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Previously, she worked at IRE and NICAR in the Database Library while completing her master’s degree at the University of Missouri.

Her investigations included abuse of government credit cards, farm subsidies and a loophole ...

This is a season of evolution at IRE

We have rebuilt our IRE Awards categories to better reflect the ways in which news is gathered and presented. And we have launched a new website that is easier to navigate, makes it easier for you to take advantage of our resources and gives you more control over your membership. 

Why did we revamp the IRE Awards? Simple: our industry is changing and we needed to change with it. Periodically over the past three decades, the awards categories have been altered and the entry guidelines revised, as circulation and viewership trends changed ...

Four incumbents and two new members were elected to the IRE Board of Directors during the annual membership meeting June 11 in Orlando. The board members will serve two-year terms on the 13-member board. Here are the election winners (with vote totals):

• Incumbent Alison Young, USA Today (207)
• Incumbent Leonard Downie, Jr., Arizona State University/ The Washington Post (190)
• Incumbent Lea Thompson, broadcast journalist/producer (171)
• Incumbent David Cay Johnston, author (166)
• New member Josh Meyer, Northwestern University (123)
• New member Matt Waite, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (119)

Other candidates for the Board of Directors were:

• Stephen Stock, WFOR-Miami (114)
• Jill ...

Investigative Reporters and Editors is proud to announce that DocumentCloud is becoming part of our organization.

DocumentCloud, funded through a grant from the Knight News Challenge, provides a set of tools and technologies designed to help journalists analyze and share source documents, and make it simple to publish those documents to the Web. Launched less than a year ago, the service, which allows news organizations to upload documents and make them public, is used by more than 250 news organizations and is home to more than 80,000 documents.

IRE is providing a home for DocumentCloud and ensuring that news ...