Time is running out for your chance to get free investigative training for your newsroom. The deadline to apply for Total Newsroom Training from IRE is by the end of the day on Friday, Feb. 22. 

TNT is meant to reach organizations that are hungry for customized investigative training but can't afford it. Training is tailored to the needs of your newsroom and is designed to increase your ability to provide watchdog and enterprise coverage for your community and to produce work that can lead to changes and improvements in those communities.

Custom sessions can include hands-on training using ...

Read more ...

By Doug Haddix
IRE Training Director 

Full immersion in local immigrant communities produces the most compelling stories, according to Kirk Semple, an immigration reporter for The New York Times. “It helps to be curious. It helps to be voracious,” Semple told participants at an IRE Better Watchdog Workshop this week in Orlando.

The full-day workshop was held in conjunction with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ annual convention. Other speakers included Manny Garcia, executive editor of El Nuevo Herald in Miami, who recently was elected as the first Latino president of the IRE board of directors. Also speaking was Mc ...

Read more ...

By Doug Haddix, IRE Training Director

When she gets e-mails and calls about controversial stories, Claudia Núñez of La Opinion in Los Angeles says some readers ask if she is working against Latinos, even though she herself is a Latina. Her curt reply: “No, I’m not. I’m a journalist.”[/caption] Often, immigrants expect ethnic media journalists to be advocates for their causes rather than independent reporters, she told more than 40 journalists at an IRE Ethnic Media Watchdog Workshop at the University of Southern California. Journalists covering immigrants should focus more time on “King Kong” story ideas ...

Read more ...

More than 70 people gathered in the desert  – presenters, students, border journalists of all ages and experiences — at the University of Texas El Paso for IRE’s first bilingual version of our Watchdog Workshop. The event included hands-on CAR training and lectures on topics including immigration, storytelling and organized crime by mostly bilingual presenters and IRE members who came in from Texas,Florida, New Mexico and Mexico. On Friday, IRE, with sponsorship support from Hearst newspapers, offered a dinner to 50 border editors and reporters in honor of Armando Rodriguez, the El Diario reporter killed last year. At the event ... Read more ...