[View the story “Social media for investigations” on Storify]
Read MoreBy Rebecca Lai Since the dawn of Wikileaks, the public has come to expect original documents. Often, however, government agencies refuse to cooperate and prevent reporters from getting their hands on original records. Even though the Freedom of Information Act and other statutes provide journalists with tools to negotiate, these laws still have flaws and…
Read MoreBy Tyler Fisher Many NICAR sessions feature journalists telling other journalists how they can improve their lives and work. On Thursday, Ben Balter from GitHub made a pitch to journalists from the outside: Become familiar with git and GitHub and you’ll be able to make better products on the web. Balter said his goal was…
Read MoreBy Anna Boiko-Weyrauch Robots were everywhere at the “Cooking with Hardware” conference session, taught by two members of “Team Blinky,” WNYC’s John Keefe and Liza Stark of Parson The New School for Design and the Institute of Play. The audience was greeted with Daft Punk and a sensor-laden welcome mat that caused the screen at the…
Read More[View the story “Detecting Corporate Fraud Workshop Highlights” on Storify]
Read MoreBy Karim Lahlou When calamity strikes and you’re sent out to investigate, knowing where to begin is half the battle. Fortunately, journalists Matt Jacob, The Dallas Morning News, and Alex Richards, Chicago Tribune, have compiled a thorough list of disaster-related data resources ranging from flooding to chemical spills. Collapsed bridges and dam failures In 2013,…
Read MoreA standing room only crowd packs the talk entiteld “When data don’t exist” featuring Matt Waite, of the University Lincoln Nebraska, Meghan Hoyer, of USA Today, and Sarah Cohen, of The New York Times at NICAR 2014 in Baltimore, on Friday, Feb 27. The panel discussed potential advantages and pitfalls associated with constructing your own…
Read MorePhoto by Travis Hartman By Diorlena Natera So you have a great story idea, but no data to back it up? Sarah Cohen, The New York Times; Meghan Hoyer, USA TODAY, and Matt Waite, University of Nebraska, shared advice for gathering your own data. Advantages It’s your product. You’re in charge when you make…
Read MoreBy Rebecca Lai Journalists love and hate documents. It’s a pain to sift through thousands of pages of documents, but it’s also what makes for great stories. Based on complaints from reporters and problems in newsrooms, some folks in the NICAR community developed easy-to-use tools to help you file, index and search various types of…
Read MoreBy Donovan Harrell Edwin Bender, executive director of The National Institute on Money in State Politics, and John Perry, a data specialist at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, offered online tools for journalists looking to gather expanded data on campaign finance and donations during “Follow the money: Lead the pack in tracking campaign finance.” Created in 1999,…
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