Alena Rehberger, Author at Investigative Reporters and Editors

IRE Radio Podcast | The Toughest Interview of My Life

November 30, 2015

There are some phone calls that will always be hard to make as a reporter. Reaching out to grieving relatives in the wake of a death is one of them. On this episode, Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Jeff Meitrodt discusses what it was like to do that over and over again as he pieced together…

NICAR Q&A with Topher Sanders

November 23, 2015

Topher Sanders Topher Sanders covers racial inequality for ProPublica. He previously reported on education and city government for The Florida Times-Union. Named to the paper’s investigative team in 2013, he became the investigative editor in 2014. How would you describe your job? I’m a reporter. And like any reporter in the country, it’s my job…

Use our new simplified fatal accidents database to write holiday stories with impact

November 20, 2015

We know how busy the end of the year can be, so we’ve put together a simplified database on fatal car accidents to help you produce year-end stories with impact. Our full DOT Fatality Analysis Reporting System database (FARS) has 19 tables and almost 800 columns of detailed information about fatal car accidents. To save…

Investigating racial inequality: Dig deeper and stop obsessing over intent

November 16, 2015

Find this story in the latest issue of the IRE Journal By Nikole Hannah-Jones | New York Times Magazine The last year has been a particularly tumultuous one when it comes to race in the United States. We’ve seen riots in two cities following the police killings of unarmed black men. There have been nationwide protests…

Behind the Story: How KING 5 TV overcame language barriers to investigate birth tourism

November 12, 2015

A screenshot from KING 5 TV’s broadcast showing the website for Seattle Fu Hua Enterprises LLC There were elusive aspects to this story that dogged Chris Ingalls from the beginning — the inscrutable website, the murky legal environment, the incognito maternity mansion. But none was more important, or more delicate, than scoring the face-to-face interviews…

2016 CAR Conference T-shirt contest to begin in January

November 12, 2015

It’s almost time for the annual CAR Conference T-shirt contest! If you don’t have a design ready to go, don’t worry. You still have plenty of time to come up with your best data journalism one-liners, SQL puns and NICAR logo designs. The winner gets bragging rights, a free shirt and $50 in the IRE…

IRE Radio Podcast | The NFL’s Concussion Cover-Up

November 10, 2015

Meet Steve Fainaru and Mark Fainaru-Wada. You might have guessed from their names that they’re brothers. They’re also both investigative journalists working for ESPN. On this episode, we’re sharing pieces of our conversations with the brothers during their recent trip to the University of Missouri. We talk about everything from their reporting on the NFL’s…

Apply to be IRE’s Google Fellow next summer!

November 9, 2015

Are you a college journalism student who enjoys holding government officials accountable, scouring public records or working with data? If so, consider spending your summer at IRE through the Google News Lab Fellowship. Eight participating organizations in the U.S. select students who will spend ten weeks working on projects focused on data journalism, online free expression, building…

Introducing NICAR-Learn: A new hub for on-demand training videos

November 4, 2015

Trying to boost your data journalism skills? We know it can be hard to learn on your own. For more than 20 years, journalists have used Investigative Reporters & Editors and the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting to share ideas, solve problems and discuss techniques for computer-assisted reporting. Today we’re excited to introduce NICAR-Learn, a…

2016 IRE Conference to take place 1 week earlier than planned