August 5th, 2010
By Jaimi Dowdell
IRE training director
Tap in to practical training from your home or office with IRE’s online sessions. This fall we’re rolling out a series of webinars led by experienced journalists and IRE trainers. Topics include Broadcast investigations, Twitter for journalists, Doing great work with limited resources and Corral and analyze text with DocumentCloud. A brief description of each session is listed below. For more information, or to register go here.
Aug. 26, 2010
Broadcast investigations
Join Tisha Thompson of WTTG-Washington, D.C. to find out how documents and computer-assisted reporting can juice up your stories.
Sept. 16, 2010
Corral and analyze text with DocumentCloud
Document Cloud Program Director Amanda B Hickman explains how DocumentCloud can strengthen your document-driven investigations with tools for annotating, organizing and publishing those records on the Web. This session is FREE for IRE members and nonmembers.
Sept. 22, 2010
Twitter tools for journalists
Learn about the most useful features of Twitter for reporting. Explore several applications for advanced searches, geographic trackers, and free software to manage all of your social media accounts in one easy-to-use interface.
Oct. 13, 2010
Doing great work with fewer resources
Tips and practical advice on feeding the daily copy beast while working on bigger enterprise stories. Ways to manage time, navigate office politics and stay focused on stories that make a difference while handling routine matters. Strategies to make progress on the big story during the reporting and writing phases.
August 2nd, 2010
By Jaimi Dowdell
IRE training director
If you’ve ever been involved in an investigative story or in-depth project, you understand how important chronology can be. I’ve often sketched timelines on notebooks, napkins or white boards. For trickier tasks or more data, I’ve turned to Excel, but I’ve never been completely satisfied with how it works.
TimeFlow, released last week, just might change all that. Funded by Duke University, the minds behind this project include IRE Board member Sarah Cohen, Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg. It’s free and open source; you can find it here. To install, download and unzip the files to your computer – it really is that simple.
Importing data is easy with CSV files. Data in TimeFlow can be viewed as a timeline, calendar, bar chart and other formats. Features include a filtering option. You can also see frequencies and spot missing values. I expected the tool to be much more complicated, but within 20 minutes, I was able to install the software and create a timeline of IRE’s upcoming training events.
Here’s the calendar view of IRE’s August events:
And the bar chart displaying frequencies of the different types of events:
Whether you enjoy working with data or not, I recommend giving this tool a shot. (Tip: If you’d like to see what it can do but don’t feel like messing with your own data, they’ve included an “examples” menu with sample datasets already loaded.)
July 27th, 2010
Laura Frank, left, of the I-News Network in Denver, and Raquel Rutledge of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
By Doug Haddix
IRE training director
Time management can be a reporter’s biggest challenge when it comes to watchdog stories.
During a recent Better Watchdog Workshop in Denver, two seasoned investigative journalists shared tips and tricks they’ve learned to make time for the big story.
Advice and tips came from Raquel Rutledge of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and Laura Frank of the I-News Network based in Denver. Rutledge drew examples from her “Cashing in on Kids” series about fraud in tax-subsidized day care – winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting. Frank recalled lessons learned from her award-winning investigations at the Rocky Mountain News and other newspapers where she worked before founding the nonprofit news center.
Here’s a sampling of their time-management tips:
- Keep an active list of ideas for bigger stories. Feed it regularly as you get ideas while covering daily beat stories.
- Use one notebook for daily stories and another for bigger enterprise pieces. During any down time, pick up the enterprise notebook and chip away at the story.
- Stay organized by using a source list, a to-do list (updated daily), a quotes file or index, a timeline of key events, and a “players’ tree” to look for connections. Such lists save time later during reporting and writing.
- Ask yourself: “Who would disagree with this?” Talk to those sources early.
- Request data early because it might take weeks or months to get it.
- Use short progress memos or notes to keep your boss up to date – and to keep yourself focused.
- Do a quick daily story to prime the pump and shake out sources for the bigger story.
