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Posts by Alena Rehberger
Meetup: Seattle journalists to gather at The 5 Point Cafe this month
If you’re a journalist in the Seattle Area, we hope you’ll join us for a Meetup on Thursday, April 14. We’ll be gathering at The 5 Point Cafe starting at 6 pm. Everyone is welcome. Bring some colleagues from your newsroom to introduce them to the power of Investigative Reporters and Editors. As always, this event…
Read MoreHow two court rulings involving universities breathe new life into the right to know
By Jonathan Peters, CJR.org Editor’s Note: This article first ran on March 23, 2016 on the Columbia Journalism Review’s website. Sunshine Week brought some welcome news for transparency advocates this year: Two state courts ruled, in suits brought by news organizations, that freedom-of-information laws require private entities to disclose their records if they perform a…
Read MoreQuickly find SEC filings in a specific location using a new tool from Sqoop
If you’re tasked with covering business, you might want to check out a new feature from Sqoop. The document-mining site recently announced a new geographic search/location filter feature for SEC filings. That means that reporters can look for all SEC form types, or just a subset such as Form Ds or 8-Ks, in their state.…
Read MoreBroadcast journalists share tips for bringing numbers to life on TV
Investigative broadcast journalists across the country gathered at the 2016 CAR Conference and shared some of their secrets for bringing data to life on TV. 1. Get raw data KXAS-TV producer Eva Parks explained how her team requested complaint and violation records concerning noise at the Dallas Love Field airport. Unfortunately, the city of Dallas…
Read MoreA Message from the President: A Departure from IRE
Dear Friends: I’m sorry to have to tell you that Mark Horvit has decided to take an exciting new job at the University of Missouri and will be stepping down as IRE’s executive director at the end of the summer. While this represents a huge loss to IRE, the board is hopeful that we’ll still…
Read More10 free tools to help you clean, analyze and visualize data
Freelance journalist Samantha Sunne and Helena Bengtsson, data projects editor for The Guardian, spent an hour at the 2016 CAR Conference going over free, open-source tools that can replace expensive data cleaning, analysis and visualization programs. Here are some of my favorite tools the speakers mentioned: 1. Google Sheets Google Sheets is a widely known…
Read MoreDownload our free data on SBA disaster loans
NICAR’s Small Business Administration (SBA) Disaster Loans data is now updated with loans approved through February 18, 2016. The disaster loans are the only form of SBA assistance not limited to small businesses; the loans help homeowners, renters, businesses and nonprofit organizations finance their rebuilding after a federally-declared disaster has destroyed their property. The data…
Read MoreIRE Radio Podcast | BONUS: The Sounds of NICAR16
There are certain pieces of advice you hear over and over again at our annual computer-assisted reporting conference: Get out there, take risks and experiment. So at our recent conference in Denver, we sent University of Missouri journalism student Jack Howard to do just that. On this bonus episode, you’ll hear his five-minute experiment: capturing…
Read MoreTraining your newsroom to look for data and interactive ideas
By Raven Nichols Training a newsroom to look for data and interactive ideas isn’t always easy. At the 2016 CAR Conference, Dana Williams of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and Rachel Schallom of Fusion explained how to introduce these concepts to your newsroom. The first step is to hold a training session. Here are a few suggestions:…
Read MoreTools to help analyze, verify and debunk visuals
By Kouichi Shirayanagi There are a lot of photos circulating on social media. Some photos, such as the famous sharks in a flooded mall or sharks jumping at a rescue helicopter, you know are fake. But how do you verify that photos used in the press are the real deal? Nikon award a prize in…
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