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Posts by Alena Rehberger
IRE Radio Podcast | Protect and Surveil
If you’ve ever been stopped by police, it’s likely an officer filled out something called a field contact report. Officials say the documents can be useful crime-solving tools, but they also have an unintended side effect: police now have massive digital databases tracking law-abiding citizens. On this episode, Glenn Smith and Andrew Knapp of The…
Read MoreWith two promotions, Chicago Sun-Times returns to its watchdog roots
By Jackie Spinner, CJR Editor’s Note: This article first ran on October 6, 2016 on the Columbia Journalism Review’s website. After five mystifying (and let’s be honest, pretty wretched) years under the ownership of wannabe journalism mogul and investor Michael Ferro, the city’s No. 2 newspaper signaled a fresh start and a new direction late…
Read MoreCall for entries: 2016 Philip Meyer Award
It’s once again time to enter the Philip Meyer Journalism Award contest. Entries are now being accepted online, through Nov. 18. Established in 2005, the award was created to honor Philip Meyer’s pioneering efforts to utilize social science research methods to foster better journalism. The contest recognizes stories that incorporate survey research, probabilities, and other social…
Read MoreElection 2016: Watch free videos on campaign finance, advertising analysis tools
As part of our NICAR-Learn video series, we’ve released three new training videos on working with election data, specifically campaign finance and advertising. We’ve made the videos – and a few others we think might be useful for election coverage – free and available to everyone between now and Election Day. After that, the videos…
Read MoreLearn how to explore data with Python’s Jupyter Notebook
Editor’s Note: This article first ran on the California Civic Data Coalition’s website on Oct. 8. Ben spoke at our San Diego Data Watchdog Workshop, a program funded by the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation. By Ben Welsh Last weekend, I traveled to the campus of San Diego State University to join a journalism workshop put on by Investigative Reporters…
Read MoreIRE names Doug Haddix as new executive director
Doug Haddix Investigative Reporters & Editors, a worldwide organization representing more than 5,500 journalists, has named Doug Haddix as its new executive director. Haddix, director of the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism, previously worked as a training director for IRE and as an investigative editor at The Columbus Dispatch in Ohio. “The entire IRE…
Read MoreBehind the Story: How a little-known law can send you to prison for a murder you never committed
Alison Flowers (left) and Sarah Macaraeg (right) You might think you have to kill someone to be charged with murder. But at least in Illinois, you’d be wrong. In an investigation for the Chicago Reader, independent journalists Alison Flowers and Sarah Macaraeg spent several months looking into a controversial law called the “felony murder rule,”…
Read MoreTrack the economic impact of Hurricane Matthew
View of Hurricane Katrina destruction in the city of New Orleans. (Photo by NOAA / Creative Commons) In the wake of any natural disaster, there’s a seemingly endless number of public service and accountability stories to chase. You want to know when the power is going to come back on. How many people have been…
Read MoreNICAR, ProPublica partner to sell data to non-members
ProPublica recently relaunched its data store. As part of the relaunch, ProPublica also announced a partnership with IRE to manage sales of data sets maintained by the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting (NICAR), a program of IRE and the Missouri School of Journalism. ProPublica will begin marketing five of IRE’s most popular data sets to…
Read MoreWhen checking your mailbox isn’t enough: 3 tips for investigating local elections
Image by Justin Grimes. Used under Creative Commons License. In September, New York Times reporter Susanne Craig checked her mailbox. Checking for snail mail wasn’t abnormal for her, but what she found was: a copy of Donald Trump’s 1995 tax returns. The document led to a notable scoop for the Times and plenty of lessons for reporters. Craig…
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