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Here at Tableau we're passionate about data as part of the public conversation. For this reason, Tableau Desktop has been available to IRE members for free. And we’re excited to announce that in addition to Tableau Desktop, IRE members will now have access to our brand-new product – Tableau Prep – designed to help everyone quickly and confidently combine, shape, and clean their data for analysis.
About Tableau Prep
If you’ve ever analyzed public data, you know the pain of digging into the data only to find that it’s poorly structured, full of inaccuracies or just plain incomplete. You’re stuck fixing the data in Excel or writing complex calculations before you can answer a simple question. Tableau Prep is designed to reduce the struggle of common yet complex tasks — such as joins, unions, pivots and aggregations — with a drag-and-drop visual experience. No scripting required.
Become a master in Tableau Prep with free training videos or instructor-led training. For more information, check out these resources:
1. Tableau Prep product information
3. Best practices for tidy data using Tableau Prep
Attending the 2018 IRE Conference in Orlando? We’ll be offering training on Tableau Prep there, too.
Requesting a license
Tableau Prep is included alongside Tableau Desktop in a special combined license for journalists as part of our partnership with IRE. To get a free license, you must be a current IRE member and contact Amy Johnston, IRE Membership and Registration Coordinator (amy@ire.org).
If you still have questions about this offering, please contact us at public@tableau.com. We would love to hear how this new product is shaping the way you tell stories with data.
— The Tableau Public Team
We’re excited to share details on two showcase panels taking place at IRE18 in Orlando. We hope you’ll make plans to attend one or both of these sessions.
SHOWCASE: Doubling down on investigative reporting
Friday, June 15, from 11:30 am – 12:30 pm
In an epic newspaper competition, The New York Times and Washington Post both have invested significant resources to watchdog journalism in recent years. Both have broken major stories on the Trump administration, sexual harassment and other issues on the national agenda. At the same time, both newspapers have reached record readership levels.
Get an inside perspective from Dean Baquet, executive editor of the Times, and Marty Baron, executive editor of the Post. The lively, insightful conversation will be moderated by Cynthia McFadden, senior investigative and legal correspondent for NBC News.
SHOWCASE: Investigating sexual misconduct and #MeToo
Friday, June 15, from 5-6 pm
It was a year of reckoning for prominent men accused of sexual harassment, abuse and assault. Go behind the scenes of #MeToo coverage with key journalists who reported and edited major stories involving President Trump, movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of Alabama, USA Gymnastics physician Larry Nassar and New Orleans chef John Besh. Panelists will share lessons learned from the investigations that can guide coverage of sexual misconduct in any community.
Speakers include Brett Anderson of The Times-Picayune, Amy Brittain of The Washington Post, Rebecca Corbett of The New York Times, Marisa Kwiatkowski of The Indianapolis Star and Beth Reinhard of The Washington Post. Bernice Yeung of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting will moderate.
From 2010 to the beginning of 2018, New Jersey municipalities spent over $42 million to cover up deaths, physical injuries and sexual abuses, all at the hands of police officers. One of six states without a police licensing system, New Jersey keeps details of its internal affairs investigations secret and, until recently, did not mandate random drug testing for police officers.
Enter the Asbury Park Press. The paper assembled a team from across the newspaper to dig into the state’s flawed policing system. The result, a 19-part series titled "Protecting the Shield," included an interview with a killer cop, recommended fixes for the state’s police system and uncovered a pervasive system of secret settlements that cost taxpayers millions.
Andrew Ford and four other reporters at the Asbury Park Press — Kala Kachmar, Ken Serrano, Alex Gecan and Susanne Cervenka — worked with investigations director Paul D’Ambrosio on the project, a two-year-long investigation.
In multiple interviews with IRE, Ford discussed the team’s findings, the genesis of the project and tips for reporters who want to tackle similarly-sized projects. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
How did this project come about?
I’ve covered the cops beat for about six years — three years here at the Asbury Park Press — and there were some suspicious or curious things that we noticed popping up on the cops beat. It sort of snowballed and, at some point, an editor felt that we had enough issues going on that it warranted taking a closer look.
For example, back in about May 2015 I came across this officer who was found to be using drugs. He had been kind of quietly let go from his department through this separation agreement, and so this prompted some questions: What are these separation agreements? How many of these can we get our hands on? What is drug testing like in these departments?
In June 2015, an officer fatally shot his ex-wife. We soon learned that there was a history of trouble between the couple, and we gradually pieced together more and more of that history.
In January 2016, a police captain out here crashed his car and was killed. I found out he was intoxicated and on drugs at the time.
And then there were a few whistleblower lawsuits along the way. In one town, Tinton Falls, we found $1.1 million paid out to two officers who alleged they had been retaliated against after trying to expose wrongdoing in their department. So, it was a series of beat coverage that prompted a larger investigative effort.
Could you talk a bit about Philip Seidle? What was the importance of getting that interview?
Philip Seidle was a Neptune Township police sergeant who fatally shot his ex-wife. It was the biggest local news event that has happened here in my time at the Asbury Park Press, so we thoroughly covered it the day it happened and in the following weeks and months. We covered developments in the criminal case against him and some policy changes that were made after a review of that incident was done by the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office. So he was a guy who we had written a lot about, but we hadn’t heard his side of the story. So I wrote him a letter in April 2017. He was wary of me at first, but I made the commitment to take the time to hear him out.
We exchanged a few letters and I had him create a timeline of his life. Things were pretty complicated, and I wanted to get his version of who he is, where he comes from, and how all this happened. He sketched all of this out for me in a 27-page letter. Then I could go about verifying it or questioning it or looking deeper into his version of events.
Seidle is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence. The prison where he's being held did not grant my request to come interview him, saying that some members of the victim's family were opposed to it. So, we had to communicate through letters and eventually through a service similar to email. He provided documents that officials wouldn't provide. For example, he gave me some restraining orders that he and his ex-wife filed against each other. The county court denied my request for those records. Other records I got from officials, like police incident reports naming him, his wife and his mistress.
We created a spreadsheet of the separation agreements and found some 68 officers who had faced discipline but were allowed to quietly resign, in the process taking home $700,000 in taxpayer funds.
So, I had his narrative through our correspondence and I had all these documents and eventually I was able to get him on the phone. There was sort of a complicated process with adding my number to his approved call list. There's only a narrow window when inmates are allowed to do that. I think we missed the window, so we had to figure out some other way. Seidle frequently calls his one-time mistress. I went to her home and got on some of the calls, recording them with his consent for videos we later put together.
I checked his story against official records and interviews with law enforcement officials. The piece detailed the signs of trouble that were long known to Seidle’s colleagues and superiors before he fatally shot his ex-wife.
You received around 30,000 documents from public records requests for this series. What were some of the challenges in organizing all of those?
One of the hardest parts was just receiving all these emails from different municipal clerks and sorting them into folders, keeping things organized and checking off on our tracking spreadsheet that we’d gotten responses.
And then, of course, manually entering all this information. We created a spreadsheet of the separation agreements and found some 68 officers who had faced discipline but were allowed to quietly resign, in the process taking home $700,000 in taxpayer funds. Now those are benefits they would have received if they’d retired honorably, things like compensation for unused sick or vacation days. We found at least three officers who moved on to other careers in law enforcement after they entered into one of these agreements. Often the town would agree to obscure the officer’s history of discipline from future employers and provide only a neutral reference. We made similar databases on department drug testing policies and, of course, the lawsuits.
Did you have to work around any major redactions?
There were some pretty heavily redacted lawsuits and settlements. From the portions that I worked on, some of the bigger denials would have been the documents associated with Phil Seidle. I did manage to find some of Seidle’s personnel documents that normally would not be releasable under our public records law. I found those attached to lawsuits and that, I think, was sort of a novel breakthrough. In New Jersey, you can’t get a police officer’s personnel records or criminal investigatory records, but I found some of these documents attached to lawsuits against some officers. Our paper is suing to reveal Seidle’s internal affairs file.
What has the reaction to the story been in New Jersey?
After our story published, we reached out to state legislators to see what they might do about this and got some commitments to pursue some change. I brought a republican and a democrat to a public panel discussion and we streamed it on Facebook Live to address some of these issues.
Probably the most exciting development is that the state attorney general announced two big changes following our reporting. In an interview he said our work shined a light on issues the public should be aware of. He implemented mandatory random drug testing for all police officers in the state and early warning systems whereby if an officer hits one of 14 criteria three times in a year they are flagged for remedial help within their department. There's also a notification to the county prosecutor's office, so there's a degree of outside oversight.
Do you have any tips for other reporters tackling a project of this size?
When it comes to filing records requests, particularly if you have a lot, try to do it all by email. If you have to do things by mail, scan and OCR (optical character recognition) those documents. It just keeps things more organized and eventually you end up with a nice, searchable database of documents. Don't let things pile up. When replies and time-sensitive questions are coming back, don't ignore those; get to them the same day if you can.
Shared spreadsheets are very helpful. We used Microsoft OneDrive so we could create Excel spreadsheets that a bunch of people could access. That's helpful for keeping track of the status of requests, as well as logging data when you're finally looking through documents. Keep a running Word document with the best anecdotes and quotes for when you actually sit down to write.
I'd also recommend calling everyone who is involved in a story, even if you think they won't talk to you. Sometimes you'll find that if you actually call them up and treat them fairly, they may talk to you.
Work together. This project was a huge undertaking and our team couldn’t have done it without collaborating, sharing ideas and sharing the tasks of collecting records and interviews.
Above all, report fearlessly and fairly. Be diligent in fact checking. The method I use is to print everything out and go through it with a red pen. I look at every fact in the story and go back to the original source of that information, whether it’s notes from an interview or some document, and I check off each fact in the story.
Several members of Investigative Reporters and Editors were among the journalists recognized in the 2018 Pulitzer Prizes:
Several members were also recognized as finalists:
Starting today, IRE will begin accepting applications for candidates for the IRE Board of Directors. This year seven of the board’s 13 seats are up for election. Three incumbents have decided not to run for new terms.
The initial filing period for candidates is April 16 - May 20. All candidates filing by this time will appear on the initial ballot when voting begins on May 29.
Electronic online voting will be open both before and during the IRE Conference this summer. Those coming to the conference will have a chance to hear from the candidates, and we encourage all those attending the conference to wait to vote until after hearing the candidates speak. Information about each candidate will also be posted online.
As in the past, candidates may join the election after the initial filing period. However, voting will have already begun, which could diminish a late-filing candidate's chances of being elected. To be considered, a late-filing candidate must be nominated by 5 pm (CT) on Friday, June 15.
You'll also be voting for two members of IRE's Contest Committee, which judges the IRE Awards. Those interested in judging will apply using the same procedure as IRE Board candidates, and will be selected on the same ballot. Contest Committee candidates' information will also be available on the IRE website, but they will not make speeches at the conference.
Learn more about candidacy and IRE's electronic voting system.
We’re busy planning panels, demos and hands-on classes for the 2018 IRE Conference in Orlando. We’ve posted a partial list of expected sessions, but here are a few highlights:
Want more conference news? Follow #IRE18 on Twitter and bookmark our IRE Conference Blog.
IRE is proud to announce the winners and finalists of the 2017 IRE Awards.
COLUMBIA, Missouri – Journalists who uncovered wrongdoing that bolstered the #MeToo movement, investigated the murder of a colleague, faced a lawsuit for trying to get public records and brought down a corrupt 100-year-old agency are among the winners of the 2017 Investigative Reporters & Editors Awards.
Across the board, this year’s winners made significant impacts. They forced testing of rape kits, made neurosurgery safer for patients and exposed the failure of the British government to investigate the murders of Russians on its soil.
"This year’s entries were among the finest examples of investigative reporting I’ve seen since I began my tenure on the awards committee," said Jill Riepenhoff, chair of IRE’s Contest Committee. "From first-year students to seasoned pros, these journalists showed the importance of investigative reporting to hold the powerful accountable. They shattered the fake news myth."
This year’s winners were selected from among more than 450 entries. Two projects were singled out for IRE Medals, the highest honor the organization bestows. The awards, given since 1979, recognize the most outstanding watchdog journalism of the year. The contest covers 17 categories across media platforms and a range of market sizes.
The IRE Awards will be presented at a luncheon on June 16 at the 2018 IRE Conference in Orlando, Florida.
Here are the winners: (Or, click here for a complete list of winners, finalists, judges and judges’ comments)
IRE Medals (2):
"Harassed," The New York Times, The New York Times staff
"Killing Pavel," Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Slidstvo.Info, Anna Babinets, Elena Loginova, Vlad Lavrov, Dmytro Gnap, Matt Sarnecki, Ilya Magazanin, Sergiu Brega, Timmi Allen (Bellingcat)
Tom Renner Award: "From Russia With Blood," BuzzFeed News, Heidi Blake, Jason Leopold, Tom Warren, Richard Holmes, Jane Bradley, Alex Campbell
FOI Award: "Deadly Decisions," Malheur Enterprise, Les Zaitz, John Braese, Pat Caldwell
Print/Online Division I: "Harassed," The New York Times, The New York Times staff (medal winner)
Print/Online Division II: "Quantity of Care," The Seattle Times, Mike Baker and Justin Mayo
Print/Online Division III: "Fostering Failure," San Francisco Chronicle, Karen de Sá, Cynthia Dizikes, Joaquin Palomino, Leah Millis
Print/Online Division IV: "Fake Subpoenas," The Lens, Charles Maldonado, Steve Myers
Broadcast/Video Division I: "Killing Pavel," Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project and Slidstvo.info, Anna Babinets, Elena Loginova, Vlad Lavrov, Dmytro Gnap, Matt Sarnecki, Ilya Magazanin, Sergiu Brega, Timmi Allen (Bellingcat)
(medal winner)
Broadcast/Video Division II (tie):
"Big Buses, Bigger Problems: Taxpayers Taken for a Ride," KXAS/NBC5 Dallas-Fort Worth, Scott Friedman, Eva Parks, Jack Douglas, Jose Sanchez, Frank Heinz, Mark Ginther
"The Drug Whisperer," WXIA-Atlanta, Brendan Keefe
Broadcast/Video Division III: "Influence, Infidelity and Men in Power," WSMV-Nashville, Nancy Amons, Jeremy Finley, Demetria Kalodimos, Jim Garbee, Jason Finley
Broadcast/Video Division IV: "State of Unrest," WVUE-New Orleans, Lee Zurik, Jon Turnipseed, Tom Wright, Mike Schaefer, Greg Phillips
Radio/Audio - Large: "They Got Hurt at Work, Then They Got Deported," NPR and ProPublica, Howard Berkes (NPR), Michael Grabell (ProPublica), Meg Anderson (NPR), Nicole Beemsterboer (NPR), Sarah Betancourt (ProPublica), Graham Bishai (NPR)
Radio/Audio - Small: "The Pope's Long Con," The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, R.G. Dunlop, Jacob Ryan, Laura Ellis, Brendan McCarthy, Erica Peterson, Stephen George, Sean Cannon, Alexandra Kanik
Student - Large: "Crude Power: An Investigation Into Oil, Money and Influence in Saskatchewan," University of Regina School of Journalism, Jennifer Ackerman, Madina Azizi, Janelle Blakley, Cory Coleman, Josh Diaz, Brenna Engel, Céline Grimard, Jared Gottselig, Rebbeca Marroquin, Katie Doke Sawatsky, Michaela Solomon, Kyrsten Stringer, Caitlin Taylor, Michael Wrobel, Trevor Grant, Patricia Elliott
Student - Small: "Sexual Assault Evidence Backlog," The Columbia Missourian, Anna Brett
Investigations Triggered by Breaking News: "Semaj Crosby," Chicago Tribune, David Jackson, Gary Marx, Duaa Eldeib, Alicia Fabbre, Stacey Wescott
Book: "Violated: Exposing Rape at Baylor University Amid College Football’s Sexual Assault Crisis," Paula Lavigne and Mark Schlabach
Gannett Award for Innovation in Watchdog Journalism: "Paradise Papers: Secrets of the Global Elite," The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Süddeutsche Zeitung, The New York Times, The Guardian and more than 90 media partners
Click here for a complete list of winners, finalists, judges and judges’ comments.
By Phil Williams, WTVF-TV
From the earliest days of my journalism career, I found inspiration in the nobility of IRE's mission and its history – and, in some of the darkest days of my career, I found strength in that legacy.
My first IRE Conference, in June 1987, was the 10-year anniversary of the Arizona Project. One of IRE's earliest members, Don Bolles, had been assassinated while running down a potential lead about Mafia involvement in land fraud in Arizona. Determined that no one should ever be able to kill a story by killing a reporter, IRE assembled a team to finish Don Bolles' work.
More than a decade after my first conference, I faced the most agonizing period of my career as a result of a police corruption investigation. One of the subjects of that investigation threatened to kill me. Another wealthy subject hired private investigators to dig into my background, ultimately launching a smear campaign based on one family member's struggle with alcoholism. He also financed two unsuccessful lawsuits that dragged on for seven years, designed to inflict an economic cost on my news organization and to try to discover my confidential sources.
That work was recognized with an IRE Medal that, because of the personal pain involved, stands out as the most cherished honor of my career.
With those lonely days in mind, I came to the IRE Board with the idea to create the Don Bolles Medal for the 40th anniversary of the Arizona Project.
According to the language approved by the Board, the Don Bolles Medal "recognizes investigative journalists who have exhibited extraordinary courage in standing up against intimidation or efforts to suppress the truth about matters of public importance."
Last year, at the IRE Conference in Phoenix, IRE awarded the first Don Bolles Medal to Miroslava Breach Velducea. The Mexican journalist was shot and killed in 2017 in retaliation for her efforts to expose organized crime and corruption in her country. According to news reports, the gunman left a note saying the assassination was "for being a snitch."
Now, the IRE Board is seeking your suggestions for the next recipient of the Don Bolles Medal.
Do you know of an investigative journalist who continues to persevere in the face of death threats or some other form of intimidation? Perhaps you know of someone who has been targeted with harassment lawsuits. Maybe there is a news organization that faces other forms of economic intimidation designed to chill its commitment to real investigative reporting.
We are now in the final days of soliciting nominations for someone who continues to fight the good fight – in the spirit of Don Bolles.
If you know someone who deserves consideration, please take a few minutes right now to fill out this nomination form.
You will be asked to provide your name, affiliation and contact information, as well as details about the nominee: A link(s) to their work and brief description of why this person merits the medal.
Phil Williams is chief investigative reporter for WTVF-TV, the CBS affiliate in Nashville. He is a longtime member of the IRE Board and chair of the Public Engagement Committee.
By Kelsie Schrader
Every beat comes with challenges and constraints, but health care presents a particularly complex set of issues. Between cutting through the industry’s jargon, finding individual sources and more, it takes time and knowledge to be a successful health care reporter.
Three journalists with experience reporting on health care shared tips and strategies for covering this fast-moving industry effectively — namely, through following the data, following the money and following the people.
Follow the data
Elizabeth Lucas, data editor at Kaiser Health News, said although health care is a difficult beat, it’s helpful to remember that no matter what you’re looking for, there’s probably data related to it. Her go-to sources for health care data include the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Agency for Healthcare Search and Quality, among others.
Once you’ve got the data, how do you handle it? Lucas offered these tips:
Follow the money
Kristen Schorsch, a reporter at Crain’s Chicago Business, said money can be very telling when covering the health care industry. She offered several tips for where and how to follow the money.
Follow the people
Nina Martin, a reporter for ProPublica, used her on-going project on maternal mortality in the U.S, to offer strategies for finding and including humans in health care stories, which can be especially hard with HIPAA.
Kelsie Schrader is a journalism student at the University of Missouri.
By David Rodriguez
Data journalism is still new to me. Despite that, I decided to dive in head first and attend the recent NICAR conference in Chicago.
It was one of my best experiences as a journalist so far.
I was reluctant to attend after feeling ignored for being "just an intern" at another event last year. But my editor at The Investigative Reporting Workshop, where I now intern, pushed me to go, promising that NICAR would be different. I’m glad that I did.
I arrived late, hungry and eager and dashed into a session on digging deep for radio and podcasts. It was a preview of what was to come over the next few days.
That hour blew my mind.
The conference led me to think about alternative sources for data — even for hidden communities. Bernice Yeung, a reporter for Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting, where I interned last year, described how she had to build her own database to report on undocumented workers who experience rape or sexual assault on the job. She recommended that journalists be upfront about the limitations of their data. Mary Hudetz, an Associated Press reporter who covers Indian Country and law enforcement in Albuquerque, New Mexico, said that local nonprofits are often good sources of data not kept by government agencies.
I raced through the the crowded conference floors to make it to as many sessions I possibly could. I heard sessions on investigating hate when the data isn’t there, investigating racial inequalities, investigating immigration and 30 neat tools available for all journalists.
But it wasn’t just the sessions that impressed me. Seasoned data journalists took the time to talk with me about their experience starting in journalism. Despite how large the conference has grown over the years, what hasn’t changed is the willingness of attendees to help young journalists like myself.
Since the conference, I’ve been asked what my favorite sessions were. I’m still processing all the tips offered by some of the world’s best journalists. I’m eager for the next NICAR conference. I can’t wait to see what methods journalists do to produce amazing stories in a time when we all need investigative journalism.
David Rodriguez is an intern at The Investigative Reporting Workshop. Reach him at davidrodriguezreporting@gmail.com or on Twitter at @DaveeJonesLock.
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