If you fill out the "Forgot Password" form but don't get an email to reset your password within 5-10 minutes, please email logistics@ire.org for assistance.
Reporters from all over will gather in Denver for the 2016 Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference in just a few short weeks. From spreadsheets to data visualization to the latest technological advances, the conference offers endless opportunities to learn and grow as a journalist. But the range of choices can be overwhelming, especially for those new to the conference. NICAR asked seasoned reporters for their best tips on making the most of the conference experience.
Tip 1: Make a plan ahead of time with one or two things you want to learn and soak up everything you can on it.
Tony Schick of Oregon Public Broadcasting said he spent his few CAR Conferences trying to soak up a dozen different things throughout the weekend, which was overwhelming and unproductive. Do some research ahead of time and plan out which panels and hands-on sessions you want to prioritize. You can also download the conference app (through Guidebook) the week before the conference to help keep track of what you want to attend. The hands-on sessions are especially helpful for gaining new skills, and you’ll want to show up early for them, as they can fill up fast.
"Don’t ignore everything else completely, but don’t get pulled in so many directions that you’re only scratching the surface of any one thing."
– Tony Schick
"I spent the most recent CAR Conference focused on learning to use Python for data analysis – writing a script that could take my raw data, clean it and analyze it," Tony said. "I now use that almost daily. Don’t ignore everything else completely, but don’t get pulled in so many directions that you’re only scratching the surface of any one thing. Take note of sessions or tools that catch your eye so you can dig deeper on your own or at the next conference. By the end of the conference, you’ll be more likely to come away with something you know enough about to put into practice."
Tip 2: Meet people. Make connections.
Todd Wallack of The Boston Globe said that the conference is a valuable opportunity to meet other journalists in person and seek advice.
“Maybe someone has written a story you admire," Todd said. "Or maybe you want guidance on how to do a local version of a national story. Don't be shy about talking to speakers after sessions or at the bar. Plan for long days. The sessions start early. And some of the best moments come from talking to people informally afterwards."
Kate Martin of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash. said a great way to meet people is to bring a power strip and sit next to an outlet. Outlets can be sparse at the conference, and people are always looking to recharge their devices. You will instantly become their best friend.
Tony recommended that you do some research ahead of time so you know who to seek out at the conference. Look through current and past Philip Meyer award winners, IRE’s Uplink blog, the Extra Extra blog and the IRE Journal to find journalists whose work you admire. It’s likely many of them will be at the conference.
Tip 3: Within your first three days back in the newsroom, put your skills and new story ideas to use. Or, better yet, start on the plane ride home.
Mark Greenblatt of Scripps News Washington Bureau said if you don’t immediately put your new skills to use, you may lose them or just return to old habits. Schedule time to put your new skills to use, even if that means coming in early or staying late.
“Remember, you are investing in your own career and you are investing in getting better at finding new skills that will help you discover and report stories that will change the world for the better," Mark said. "Your work has the potential to change laws, reform industries, even to save lives – if you pick your research areas well. Why would you wait one more day to begin such an important, fun, and rewarding journey?”
Lightning Talks are back for the 2016 CAR Conference in Denver. Pitch your ideas at lightningtalks.ire.org by Feb. 21.
5 minute talks on any subject. Anyone who is attending NICAR 2016 can pitch and the attendees vote on the talks they want to see. The 10 talks with the most votes will be presented during NICAR.
From now until Feb. 21st, come up with a pitch (or two) and submit it here. Then, on the morning of Feb. 22nd, the pitching period ends and the voting period begins. You'll be able to vote for as many talks as you'd like, and the 10 talks with the most votes will be a part of the lightning talks session at NICAR this year. Voting ends on Feb. 28th and we'll post the official lightning talks schedule within a day or two. Then, all that's left is to come to the lightning talks session on Friday, March 11 at 4:45 p.m. and enjoy!
Here are three pitches that were selected in recent years.
Watch the lightning talks from 2015 or 2014, or check out the full list of proposals from last year.
Last year, Sisi Wei encouraged everyone (newbies especially) to pitch a lightning talk, and offered to help coach, prod, brainstorm with, edit, and encourage anyone who needed it. This still applies! If you're interested in pitching and need help coming up with something, read this.
Yes you can! On the other hand, if you've spoken in both 2014 and 2015, please take a well-deserved year off and encourage new speakers to pitch a talk.
What works in your college-level computer-assisted reporting or data journalism course? Is there one piece from your syllabus that you find to be especially successful with your students? Is there an approach to teaching this that works every time? Is there a data set that is a sure bet? Is there a magical exercise that always succeeds?
If so, we'd like you to share this best practice with other educators at NICAR 2016. Pitch us your best practice(s) that you'd like to share (using this form) and we'll choose some of you to present a 5-minute lightning talk during a session dedicated to teaching students how to use data in journalism.
Your "best practice" could be related to anything we might teach in a CAR or data journalism course – finding data, cleaning data, using spreadsheets or database managers, creating data viz, maps, scraping, basic coding, etc. It doesn't have to be a hands-on exercise, either. Tell us about particularly successful assignments or even something about your course philosophy or overall approach.
Please submit your lightning talk pitch by Friday, Feb. 19th using this form.
Panel organizers Brant Houston and Meredith Broussard will review the submissions, and notify the selected speakers by Feb. 25th. That'll give you two weeks to polish your routine!
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at brant.houston@gmail.com or merbroussard@gmail.com.
By Sacha Pfeiffer, The Boston Globe
'Spotlight' on the IRE Radio Podcast
Listen to Pfeiffer, Walter Robinson and Marty Baron discuss the Globe’s reporting in 2002 and 2003.
Fourteen years ago, my Boston Globe Spotlight team colleagues and I published our first story about the Catholic Church’s widespread cover-up of clergy sex abuse. It was a decades-long practice aimed at avoiding public scandal: paying secret settlements to victims, dissuading them from going to the courts or police, promising to remove accused priests from circulation – and quietly returning abusers to parishes, where they often abused again.
Our reporting ultimately consumed nearly two years of our lives, resulting in more than 1,000 stories. And it taught me – then a 29-year-old reporter – some of the most important and enduring lessons of my life: the importance of questioning authority, the risks of being blindly deferential to powerful institutions, and the immense value of investigative journalism.
As our industry struggles with its financial challenges, investigative reporting is increasingly viewed as an unaffordable luxury. It requires the support and patience of editors and publishers willing to give reporters months – sometimes years – to focus on a single project. The payoff can be enormous, and it can be vital to a healthy democracy. But this type of work is at risk of becoming an endangered species.
To help keep investigative reporting robust, the Boston Globe is awarding a $100,000 fellowship – sponsored by Open Road Films, Participant Media and First Look Media – to one or more individuals or teams of journalists to work on in-depth research and reporting projects. The chosen journalist(s) will collaborate with established Spotlight reporters and editors, and submissions will be accepted through Feb. 29, 2016. We encourage anyone interested to apply. For more information and an application, go to www.spotlightfellowship.com.
Sacha Pfeiffer, a print and broadcast journalist, was a member of the Boston Globe Spotlight team that won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its stories on clergy sex abuse in the Catholic Church. That reporting is the subject of the movie Spotlight, in which Pfeiffer is played by actress Rachel McAdams.
Join us for the first IRE Chicago Meetup of the year! We’ll be gathering at The M Lounge (1520 S. Wabash Ave. Chicago, IL) on Thursday, Feb. 4 from 6-9 p.m. As with all of our Meetups, you don’t have to be an IRE member to attend. So bring a friend, colleague or anyone you know who loves investigative reporting/data journalism.
Please RSVP online for the event and join the IRE Chicago Meetup group if you haven’t already.
Start your 2016 CAR Conference a day early to take advantage of some special training opportunities from our partners.
Reveal/The Center for Investigative Reporting will once again offer "Techraking <=16: Bootstrapping the News," a popular workshop that helps attendees set up their computers to take advantage of all the tools they’ll be learning about at the conference.
In the four-hour workshop led by veteran data crunchers, you’ll be introduced to crucial programming concepts and tools and – most importantly – why we use them.
When: Wednesday, March 9 from 2-6 p.m.
Cost: $50 per person
Learn more about the workshop, including the technical requirements to attend, and register online.
The Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism will host a three-hour pre-conference workshop on 10 great business databases to mine for stories.
Data journalist Stephen Doig, the Knight Chair at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, will demonstrate 10 data sources you may not be familiar with. From ZIP code-level business patterns to foreign trade imports and exports and hospital data, Doig will walk you through seldom-used databases that hold treasures for reporters.
When: Wednesday, March 9 from 2-5 p.m.
Cost: Free
Learn more about the workshop and register online.
At our annual CAR Conference, we have more than 100 hands-on classes in topics ranging from introductory tutorials in data analysis to advanced sessions on programming. Most of these classes are first come, first served and tend to fill up quickly.
We try to offer repeats of the most popular topics, and we'd like to hear which classes you are most excited about. If you're planning on attending the conference in Denver March 10-13 please take a few minutes and complete this survey to tell us what classes you're most likely to attend.
We'll keep the survey open through Tuesday, Jan. 19. At that time, we'll tally the votes to help us plan repeats of the most popular sessions.
Please note: In addition to the open classes, a limited number of longer hands-on workshops require preregistration and an additional fee. These workshops are not included in the survey, but you can find out more about them on the conference website.
IRE has been running the CAR Conference and offering hands-on classes since the early 90's. We've always worked hard to make this conference a place where journalists can get practical hands-on training in software, tools and techniques.
If you attended an IRE Conference in the early 2000s, the plot of the movie "Spotlight" might have sounded familiar. That’s because the Hollywood depiction of the Boston Globe’s investigation into the clergy sex abuse scandal stayed surprisingly true to the real behind-the-scenes story. How do we know? A few of the journalists depicted in the film – Walter Robinson, Marty Baron and Sacha Pfeiffer – discussed the reporting process at conferences in 2002 and 2003. We’re sharing some of that archival audio on this special bonus episode.
As always, you can find us on Soundcloud, iTunes and Stitcher. If you have a story you think we should feature on the show, drop us a note at web@ire.org. We’d love to hear from you.
EPISODE NOTES
Looking for links to the stories, resources and events we discussed on this week's podcast? We've collected them for you.
CREDITS
Adam Aton produced this episode. IRE Web Editor Sarah Hutchins edits the podcast.
MUSIC
We appreciate your patience and will see you in the new year.
Are you an independent journalist looking for support and funding for a new project? Consider applying for the Freelance Investigative Reporters and Editors (FIRE) Pilot Project and IRE’s Freelance Fellowship.
Resources and support
FIRE is a one-year pilot program from Project Word that provides freelance investigative journalists with reporting tools and resources. IRE is collaborating with Project Word on the grant-funded program and will provide research and training services. Independent journalists can apply for two services:
FIRE is not intended as a funding program, although a very limited number of stipends will be available. If you are looking to finance your investigation, consider applying for IRE’s Freelance Fellowship (detailed below).
Learn more about FIRE and apply by Feb. 10
Funding
IRE’s Freelance Fellowship provides awards of $1,000 or more to journalists who make their living primarily as freelancers. Applications are scrutinized by three experienced freelance journalists. Proposals are judged in part on the breadth, significance and potential impact of the investigative project. At the request of the donor, proposals dealing with whistleblowers, business ethics and/or privacy issues will receive priority; projects involving other topics will be given serious consideration by the committee as well.
Read work by previous recipients of IRE’s Freelance Fellowship and apply online by April 1.
Looks like you haven't made a choice yet.
