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by Adam Rhodes

In about a week, hundreds of my favorite nerds are going to descend on Indianapolis to dive deep into panels and roundtables, spreadsheets classes and all the other things that make NICAR so unique. Disguised as a delightfully dorky meetup of data journalists, NICAR is an unmatched chance to expand your reporting toolbelt and level up your journalism. In just a few days, you can get your feet wet with R, Python, QGIS or even the tried and true Google Sheets, all alongside panels from some of the best reporters in the country and networking sessions where you can introduce yourselves. 

And in classic NICAR tradition, we will be kicking off Friday evening of the conference with Lightning Talks, probably the epitome of delightfully dorky. 

We will be doing things a little differently this year. The event, MC’d by yours truly, will begin with the 2025 Philip Meyer Award — earned by the Baltimore Banner, ProPublica, The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com, Bloomberg News, and The Blade. But be sure to get to the space early because we will lead right into Lightning Talks after we give these newsrooms their well deserved flowers, and you’ll want to have a good seat for both.

And without further ado, the lineup of this year’s Lightning Talks is below, in the order they’ll be appearing.

  • And after building an AI editorial board that makes language models argue with each other about controversial stories, Areeba Fatima of the Columbia Journalism School will show us what worked, what didn’t and what the audience can do to improve it.
  • With data about the past 10 years (!!) of NICAR conferences on hand, Tristan Lee of Decoherence Media will be our guide through the NICAR ecosystem as we see how the speakers, outlets and session topics are connected.
  • Jessica Piha of USAFacts will walk us through a quiet but urgent challenge: how the heck do we modernize hundreds of thousands of government data sets that weren’t built for the modern age?
  • Nick Devlin will give us a behind-the-scenes look at ESPN’s Sports Misery Index, which collects a number of data points to show you just how happy (or unhappy) you should be with your favorite sports team’s track record. 
  • Kylie Clifton of Columbia University will help us bridge the divide between data-savvy journalists and those without the skills or experience, in ways that lead to better reporting and collaboration — and hopefully less butting of heads. 
  • Horror fans rejoice: Stephanie Sugars of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker will walk us through her horror movie database, exploring patterns in how scares are made, labeled and reinvented over time — with a few surprising twists along the way.
  • John McCracken of Investigate Midwest will help us answer the question on everyone’s mind, “Should you buy backyard chickens?” using data he’s compiled after a year of owning backyard chickens of his very own. 
  • Julia Haslanger of The Philadelphia Inquirer will show us how to present data in (ethical and unethical) ways that can change how we perceive and understand it. 
  • Steven Rich of the New York Times will talk about how, despite a career that’s allowed him to use data to tell deep stories and make positive change in the world, when he used it in his personal life, it came close to costing him his life. 
  • Katrina Ventura of Heart Television will use the success of ‘Heated Rivalry’ to explain how we can better engage our audiences with the way we build interactive elements in our reporting.

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