Invest in yourself during the Spring Member Drive

April 11, 2026

IRE is kicking off its Spring Member Drive on Monday and there’s never been a more important time for you to invest in your work as a journalist. 

We know what you’re facing. Reporters across the country continue to face layoffs and newsroom budgets won’t stop shrinking. At the same time, the need for investigative journalism and accountability reporting has never been greater. 

Journalists like you are working in one of the most challenging media environments in recent memory. Information is more complex, harder to verify and often more difficult to access. Critical public records can change or disappear without notice. 

In this environment, access to training, tools and a professional community is essential infrastructure for reporting. That’s why it’s time to invest in yourself. 

Being a member of IRE is more than entering the IRE Awards or going to a conference; it’s an investment in your reporting skills, your professional network and your career. In uncertain economic times, the best investment journalists can make is in tools and training that make them indispensable. IRE members have access to the resources and skills that help them break stories and dig deeper

As part of our Spring Drive, IRE is excited to announce that Visualping has been added to the lineup of member benefits. Visualping is an AI-powered website monitoring tool that automatically tracks any webpage and sends you an alert when something important changes. Used by thousands of journalists worldwide, Visualping is built to help reporters catch the quiet, unannounced changes that can lead to big stories: a scrubbed government page, a new court filing, a subtle shift in a company's terms of service.

IRE will be hosting a webinar for members to learn about Visualping on April 28 at 4 p.m. ET, 

We are also unveiling our new and improved Resource Center, where you’ll find thousands of tipsheets, conference recordings, and award submissions. IRE mainstays Ben Welsh and Derek Willis will lead a webinar for members on April 29 at 2 p.m. ET to provide an overview of the new database and leave plenty of time for feedback and questions.

Also part of the spring drive, we’ll host a webinar with the team at Everlaw. They’ll demo their tools to help with automatic transcription of audio and video, making documents text-searchable through optical character recognition and more on April 21 at 1 p.m. ET.

All three webinars are free but exclusive to current members only. Find details about these webinars and all of IRE’s trainings here. And if you're not a member or need to renew, you can find all the details here.