I attended an IRE conference for less than $30 and you can too!

By Samantha Sunne

Attending six conferences in three years - mostly as a student - I’ve made something of a tradition of going to IRE conferences on the cheap. There are four components to the cost of a conference, and each can be stripped down as far as you and your comfort level are willing to go. My personal record is $28 for all four components (Boston, IRE, 2012).

1. Travel: Philadelphia makes an easy trip for those of us on the East Coast: Megabus, BoltBus, Peter Pan, Greyhound and YO Bus (the infamous "Chinatown bus") all offer service from New York, Boston and DC for under $10. Some even offer $1 bus rides, which is how I booked my IRE15 travel for six bucks roundtrip. Amtrak offers more comfort and reliability, but why pay $100 for Wifi that works when you could just listen to the entire backlog of IRE podcasts? If you're stuck flying in, I’d recommend search engines like STA Travel, StudentUniverse, Spirit Airlines and Kayak.

2. Housing: Here's where I start to betray my own stingy principles, because staying in the conference Marriott may actually be worth the cringe-inducing cost. You’re never far from the action and you can go pass out whenever you need, which will probably be more often than you expect. You can double-, triple- or quadruple-up on roommates. Searching "hotel" on Google maps or using sites like Hotels.com will give you cheaper alternatives within a few city blocks. An even better option is hostels. For those who never backpacked in their college days, a hostel is basically a hotel with zero frills, such as free towels or shampoo. I once split a perfectly nice hostel room with another attendee for about $20/night.

3. Registration: This one is surprisingly negotiable, if you’re willing to hustle. Ask your school or internship or job if they’ll foot the bill - surprisingly often, they will. The deadline for this year has already passed, but IRE and other orgs offer scholarships for every conference. Professional members can still shave $30 off their registration by signing up by May 8. Recent college grads can also keep their student membership - and sign up at the discounted student rate - for up to three years. I’m pretty sure IRE has funded, waived or subsidized every conference I’ve been to. They’re pretty incredible like that.

4. Food and drinks: Here, you're going to have a seesaw between saving money and networking. Almost everyone will be going out for lunch, dinner or drinks, and you've just got to decide which ones you're willing to pay for. Go to ALL the conference’s free food things, especially the mentorship breakfast, and sneak away with danishes for the afternoon. If you bring your own food, you can eat in the lobby and still hang out with people. Another pro tip: when you end up at the hotel bar, strike up a conversation before heading to the bar - if you're young or a student, they'll often offer to buy you a drink. Feel free to repeat this technique as needed.

And one more idea: if you’re not attending but are in town, please follow the hashtag and come hang out at the bar. It’ll be fun, I swear.

Samantha Sunne is a reporter on the data team at Reuters.

We hope you’re making plans to join us in Philadelphia this June for the 2015 IRE Conference. Visit our conference page to check out some of the sessions and hands-on classes we’ll be offering this year.

This year, along with our panels, we’ll be hosting conversation-style sessions with two influential journalists: Seymour Hersh and Laura Poitras.

Thursday: Seymour Hersh

Seymour M. Hersh started his career as a police reporter in Chicago around 1960, and went on to cover the statehouse in South Dakota for UPI, joined the Associated Press in Chicago and moved to Washington, D.C., where he covered the Pentagon and began digging into issues surrounding the Vietnam War. He was working as a freelancer when he exposed the My Lai massacre, and began his long association as a contributor for the New Yorker in 1970. He was hired by The New York Times as an investigative reporter in 1972, leaving the paper seven years later to focus on writing books and for magazines. In 2004, Hersh exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces in the New Yorker. He's won a Pulitzer Prize, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more.

Saturday: Laura Poitras

Laura Poitras is a filmmaker, journalist, and artist.  CITIZENFOUR, the third installment of her post-9/11 Trilogy, won an Academy Award for Best Documentary, along other awards. Part one of the trilogy, MY COUNTRY, MY COUNTRY, about the U.S. occupation of Iraq, was nominated for an Academy Award.  Part two, THE OATH, focused on Guantanamo and the war on terror, and was nominated for two Emmy awards. In 2006, the U.S. government placed her on a secret watchlist and, through 2012, she was detained and interrogated at the U.S. border each time she traveled internationally.  To protect her footage from being seized at the U.S. border, she relocated to Berlin in 2012. Her NSA reporting has been published in The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, The Intercept, and shared in the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.

Yoani Sánchez, who runs Cuba’s first independent daily digital news outlet, 14ymedio, will no longer be able to attend the conference. She was scheduled to hold a session on Friday. She sends her regrets, and she and 14ymedio look forward to working with IRE in the coming year.

This blog post was updated on 5/15/15.

If you're a journalist in the Bay Area, we hope you’ll join us for a Meetup on Thursday, April 16. We’ll be gathering at the North Gate Hall Library on the UC-Berkeley campus starting at 6 pm. Drinks and snacks will be provided! Come share tips with future investigative reporters. 

As always, this event is open to members and non-members (this includes students from other campuses and freelancers).

Please RSVP on the Meetup page and, if you haven’t done so already, join the group.

IRE has member-organized Meetup groups in six cities. Learn more about them on our IRE Meetups page.

IRE is proud to announce the winners and finalists of the 2014 IRE Awards contest. 

"This year's entries show groundbreaking investigative journalism is being produced at all levels, from a small Oregon weekly to the nation's largest newspapers, non-profits and broadcasters,” said Ziva Branstetter, chair of the IRE Contest Committee. “The entries had impact in their communities and across the country, prompting campaign finance reforms, investigations and resignations as well as better care for veterans.

"The entries also show several important trends continue to grow,” Branstetter said. “Journalists are finding inventive ways to tell stories on multiple platforms and collaborating with other media outlets to produce ambitious projects for a variety of audiences.

“The next time you hear someone lamenting the loss of great investigative journalism, show them this list."

This year’s winners were selected from among more than 550 entries. One organization – ProPublica – is a multiple award winner, in both the multimedia and the Gannett Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism categories, for two separate projects.
The awards, given by Investigative Reporters & Editors Inc. since 1979, recognize the most outstanding watchdog journalism of the year. The contest covers 16 categories across media platforms and a range of market sizes.

Click here for a complete list of winners and finalists.

In 2009 U.S. President Barack Obama wrote that her blog "provides the world a unique window into the realities of daily life in Cuba" and applauded her efforts to "empower fellow Cubans to express themselves through the use of technology." TIME magazine listed her as one of the World’s 100 Most Influential People, stating that "under the nose of a regime that has never tolerated dissent, Sánchez has practiced what paper-bound journalists in her country cannot: freedom of speech." Foreign Policy magazine has named her one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers.

In May of 2014, Sánchez combined her passion for journalism and digital media to launch 14ymedio, Cuba's first independent daily digital news outlet. It serves as a fresh voice in the island, with exclusive national news, highlighting not only political and economic developments but also social and cultural activities.

She has received much international recognition for her work, including the Ortega y Gasset Prize, Spain’s highest award for digital journalism; the Maria Moors Cabot Prize from Columbia University; the World Press Freedom Hero Award from the International Press Institute; and the Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands.

Update: As of 5/13, we are only accepting applications for mentors. Sign up online by May 17.

The IRE Conference offers an opportunity for in-depth, one-on-one coaching on investigative reporting. These private sessions allow attendees to seek advice on challenging stories or follow-up ideas.

IRE pairs those who signed up with a mentor, and contact information is provided to both mentors and those who want to be mentored. Mentors and mentees can then agree on a time and place to meet at the conference.   

These sessions are not for job seekers; they are designed for teaching and sharing information. Mentees should bring examples of work and story ideas. (Note: IRE is unable to provide private access to audiovisual equipment for broadcast mentoring. Please make your own arrangements if your mentor agrees to review a work sample.)  

Click to learn more about the program. 

The IRE mentoring program is sponsored by the Scripps Howard Foundation.

Investigative Reporters and Editors is now welcoming nominations for its third annual Golden Padlock award recognizing the most secretive government agency in the United States.

"Governments have elevated secrecy into a form of high art," said Robert Cribb, chair of the Golden Padlock committee. "We seek to honor those who have excelled in the practice of undermining the public’s right to know."

Nominations should be emailed to goldenpadlock@ire.org including the name of the government department or individual along with reasons and/or media coverage detailing the intransigence. Entries must be submitted to IRE by May 1.

Last year’s Golden Padlock winners were the U.S. Navy FOIA office for its commitment to keep documents and images from a navy yard massacre from public view and the governors of Oklahoma and Missouri for their dedication to secrecy around execution records. The U.S. Border Patrol won the inaugural Golden Padlock award in 2013 for refusing to make public the details of use-of-force incidents involving its agents.

IRE is once again offering fellowships for independent journalists who are working on investigative projects. And thanks to the generosity of IRE members and a donor who provided matching money, we're able to offer larger fellowships this year. 

First place will win $2,500; second place will get $1,500 and third place will get $1,000.

Applications are due by Friday, April 3. For more information on the fellowship and how to submit an application, visit our Fellowships & Scholarships page.

See past winners and read testimonials online.

This week we posted updated data on loans backed by the Small Business Administration. The SBA 7a database has loan records going back to 1990 (prior years available on request); fields include the name and address of the business getting the loan, franchise and industry codes, the bank lending the money, the amount loaned, and (where applicable) whether the loan was paid in full or charged off. Visit the database page to buy the data or read the documentation.

Posting the data was the final step in the process that began all the way back in October when NICAR filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the SBA for the most recent loan data.

It was a request we had filed many times before using essentially the same language with a standard fee waiver request (we’re a nonprofit, we’re requesting the data in the public interest, etc.). But unlike previous years, when SBA approved a fee waiver for the data as a matter of course, this time we were slapped with $250 in fees.

When we inquired about the fees, we were told they were decided on a case-by-case basis and asked to provide a justification for a waiver. We thought we did just that by emailing documentation of past FOIA requests that received fee waivers from SBA. The agency’s response? The fee waiver justification--which was accepted for the same request in prior years--was “insufficient.”

We opted to appeal the waiver to the SBA’s FOIA Office and figured we’d be getting that data for free in no time. A couple weeks later, the Acting Chief, Freedom of Information/Privacy Act Office at SBA emailed NICAR that the office would be responding directly after reviewing the relevant records. So far, so good.

It wasn’t until January we were notified of any progress on the request. That’s when FOI/PA Office said they were sending the waiver request back to the Office of Capital Access--the same office that had originally denied the waiver.

About a week later, surprisingly, that office decided to grant the fee waiver and mail out the request using the same justification it had rejected three months earlier. The lesson here? When it comes to FOIA requests, be persistent: don't accept fees or waiver denials, don't take no for an answer. If you can afford the time, push back. And thanks for waiting so that we could take the time to fight this.

More importantly: IRE members now have access to updated data on federally-backed loans to small businesses across the country, including industry codes, lender information, amount loaned and other information.

WHAT'S IN IT?

The 7a program is the SBA's most common loan program. It provides loans to small business owners who can't obtain financing through traditional channels. The program operates through private-sector lenders who provide loans that are, in turn, guaranteed by the SBA. The SBA 7a program itself has no funds for direct lending or grants. The data contain information on the business getting the loan including address and industry code, the bank lending the money, the amount loaned, and (where applicable) whether the loan was paid in full or charged off.

WHAT FORMAT?

SBA 7a data comes in one tab-delimited text file, easily imported or linked in Access and other database managers. If you'd like something different, we'll do our best to help you out. Email datalib@ire.org or call (573) 884-7711.

WHAT CAN I DO WITH IT?

You can identify the businesses in your area with loans backed by the U.S. Small Business Administration, and find out which financial institutions are making those loans.

Journalists can use 7a data to explore repayment of SBA loans by businesses in their communities, find out which financial institutions are major SBA lenders and find out what types of businesses are getting the loans. The data can also help you investigate how the SBA works with state and local agencies to lend money to small businesses.

CONTACT THE DATA LIBRARY

For more information on the data go to https://www.ire.org/nicar/database-library/databases/sba-7a-business-loans/ or contact the Database Library at 573-884-7711 or datalib@ire.org.

We hope you’re making plans to join us in Philadelphia June 4-7 for the IRE Conference.

We’ll be sharing expected speakers and panels soon, but we're excited to announce our 2015 keynote speaker – James Risen.

Risen is an investigative reporter for the New York Times, based in Washington. He was the winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and was a member of the New York Times reporting team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. He was also the winner of the 2006 Goldsmith Prize for investigative reporting.

Risen joined the New York Times in 1998, after previously working at the Los Angeles Times. He is the author or co-author of four books. The first was Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War (1998), the first comprehensive history of the anti-abortion movement in the United States. The second, The Main Enemy: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Final Showdown with the KGB (2003), won the 2003 Cornelius Ryan Award from the Overseas Press Club as the year’s best non-fiction book on international affairs. His third book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (2006), was a national bestseller. His most recent book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War (2014), looks at the hidden costs of war.

Risen recently prevailed in a lengthy legal battle against the Obama administration, which had been trying to crack down on government officials leaking national security information to reporters. The Justice Department wanted Risen to testify at the trial of Jeffrey Sterling, an ex-CIA officer charged with leaking details about a botched operation in Iran. Prosecutors thought Sterling took his concerns about the program to Risen, who described it in "State of War." Lawyers in January said Risen would not be called to testify.

“The IRE Board is thrilled to have James Risen as the Keynote speaker at our National conference," said Matt Goldberg, chairman of the Conference Committee. "Throughout his career, James has been a champion in the fight for information.  His reporting has shed a bright light on government secrecy and his pursuit of journalism in the face of personal prosecution is inspiring.”