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The IRE and NICAR offices will be closed Tuesday, Dec. 24, through Wednesday, Jan. 1. The University of Missouri is on winter break leave during this time. We appreciate your patience and will see you in the new year.
We’ve posted a list of more than 150 expected panels, demos, commons and hands-on classes we’re planning for the 2020 NICAR Conference in New Orleans!
This list is designed to help you make decisions about the conference (show it to your boss!), but it doesn’t include everything we’ll be offering.
A few highlights:
Sign up to get detailed updates on the 2020 NICAR Conference in New Orleans. We’ll let you know any time we make a major announcement, update you on the planning process and remind you of key dates/deadlines surrounding the conference.
IRE will provide coast-to-coast training opportunities for college educators and students as part of the new IRE on Campus program. Educator bootcamps will take place in Tucson, Chicago and Syracuse. Additionally, two schools — San Diego State University and Florida A&M University — have also been selected to receive free custom training.
Generous funding from Lumina Foundation helped launch the campus initiative. It features two components:
1. Immersive data bootcamps for journalism educators
Educator bootcamps supported by Lumina Foundation and Syracuse University will take place at Loyola University in Chicago July 28 – Aug. 1, 2020, the University of Arizona in Tucson Jan. 5-9, 2021 and Syracuse University in summer 2021.
Each bootcamp will include four-and-a-half days of data training for college journalism educators. Educators will receive hands-on training as well as assistance with syllabus creation and teaching skills. No data journalism experience or data teaching experience is necessary.
Scholarships (including tuition, travel and lodging) will be available for 10 educators of color to attend each bootcamp. Approximately 10 additional slots will be available for other college educators at each training.
For more information on the bootcamps, visit the IRE Data Bootcamps for Educators page.
2. Custom training for students and educators at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-Serving Institutions
IRE selected San Diego State University (HSI) and Florida A&M University (HBCU) for custom training in 2020.
An IRE trainer will spend several days on each campus for a customized program that could feature guest lectures in classes, hands-on data training, an afternoon or evening mini-workshop for all interested students and faculty, a pizza party to brainstorm story ideas, and meetings with administrators and faculty to discuss the latest trends and tools in investigative reporting.
Up to 25 students and faculty at each campus will receive free IRE memberships, which provide access to invaluable online resources.
For more information
If you have questions, please email training@ire.org.
Investigative Reporters and Editors was formed in 1975, the year before Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was killed by a car bomb. He died days before he was scheduled to speak at IRE’s first annual conference. Now, decades after his death, the team at The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com found tapes Bolles recorded before he was killed. On this special episode, we’re sharing the first installment of the their new podcast “Rediscovering: Don Bolles, A Murdered Journalist.” We hope you love it as much as we do.
You can find the IRE Radio Podcast on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play. 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.
Looking for links to the stories and resources we discussed on this week’s podcast? We’ve collected them for you.
In Passage (Blue Dot Sessions) / CC BY-NC 4.0
Town Market (Blue Dot Sessions) / CC BY-NC 4.0
Thanks to our friends at The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com for letting us share this story. Kelly Kenoyer is the host of the IRE Radio Podcast. IRE Editorial Director Sarah Hutchins edits the podcast. We are recorded in the studios of KBIA at the University of Missouri.
2020 Fellows Sameea Kamal (left), Josh McGhee (center) and Monica Velez (right).
Sameea Kamal of the Los Angeles Times, Josh McGhee from The Chicago Reporter and Monica Velez of The Fresno Bee will serve as IRE’s 2020 Journalists of Color Investigative Reporting Fellows.
Kamal, a news desk editor, has been at the Los Angeles Times since November. Prior to the LA Times, she worked at the Center for Public Integrity as a digital editor. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
McGhee, an investigative reporter, has been at The Chicago Reporter since October 2018. He previously worked at DNAinfo as a reporter covering neighborhood change and crime. He is a graduate of Culver-Stockton College.
Velez, an education reporter, joined the Fresno Bee in December. She previously worked at Valley Public Radio in Fresno, California. She is a graduate of California State University, Sacramento.
IRE’s yearlong fellowship is designed to increase the range of backgrounds, experiences and interests within the field of investigative journalism, where diverse perspectives are critically important. The 2020 fellowship was open to U.S. journalists of color with at least three years of post-college work experience.
Fellows will investigate important issues in their communities. Kamal will investigate sexual assault on colleges and university campuses. McGhee will work on a project investigating hate crimes and the judicial system in Cook County, Illinois. Velez will dig into how the Fresno Unified School District’s failure to adequately desegregate six decades ago affects students of color today.
Kamal, McGhee and Velez will receive a suite of IRE resources and training opportunities. These include complimentary registrations and travel assistance for an IRE data journalism boot camp and both annual conferences. Additionally, they will receive free IRE data services and a mentor network of IRE members.
"We’re thrilled to expand this critical program from one fellowship this year to three next year," IRE Executive Director Doug Haddix said. "Generous donors and company sponsors have provided the financial support to bolster this effort. We applaud their commitment to supporting talented journalists of color."
The IRE Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellowship was initially made possible thanks to generous donations from IRE members Meghan Hoyer, Megan Luther, Mike Tahani and Mike Gruss. Additional funding was provided by the IRE community and company sponsors CNN, Gray Television and ABC News. More than $23,000 has been raised to support the program.
Applications for the 2021 IRE Journalist of Color Investigative Reporting Fellowship will be available in October 2020.
If you’d like to donate to the fellowship, go here and indicate your contribution is for the JOC fellowship.
If you are interested in participating in IRE training events, you can check them out here. If you are looking for financial assistance to attend any of these events, you can find the details here.
Thanks to the generosity of many, IRE is fortunate to have funding to help journalists and educators attend its data journalism boot camps.
This month, IRE awarded nine fellowships for the January 2020 Data Journalism Boot Camp.
Isabel Dieppa, an independent journalist from Chicago; Shayla Love from VICE (Brooklyn, New York); Seong Jae Min from Pace University (New York, New York) and Utami Kusumawati, an independent journalist from Indonesia, received the Ottoway Fellowship.
Established by David Ottaway and the Ottaway Family Fund, the Ottoway Fellowship is aimed at increasing the diversity of IRE's membership.
David Barer and Jody Barr, both from KXAN (Austin, Texas), received the Total Newsroom Training Fellowship.
Total Newsroom Training (TNT) Fellowships are open to those who have completed the TNT program.
Kae Petrin from St. Louis Public Radio received the Holly Whisenhunt Stephen Fellowship.
Established by WTHR-Indianapolis to honor Holly Whisenhunt Stephen, an award-winning journalist and longtime IRE member, who died November 2008 after a long battle with cancer.
Bayley Bischof from KOLN (Lincoln, Nebraska) and Adrienne Mayfield from WAVY (Portsmouth, Virginia) received the Knight TV Data Fellowship.
Funded by the Knight Foundation to strengthen data watchdog skills at local TV stations across the United States.
If you are interested in applying for a fellowship for financial assistance for future IRE boot camps or IRE conferences, the next due date is Jan. 13. More information can be found here.
It’s time to gather your best stories of the year! The 2019 IRE Awards contest is now open for submissions, and we can’t wait to see what you’ve done.
You’ll notice some changes to the number of or length of stories you can enter. Print entries are now limited to five primary pieces and audio and video entries are limited to one hour to streamline the judging process (There is still no limit to supplemental material.) Check out the FAQ page for more details and how these new limits might affect your entry.
We've also simplified our entry process by using Wufoo forms. We hope you'll find entering the IRE Awards straightforward and easy.
As with any new model, we may need to tweak some things as we move forward. Please check out the new rules and let us know if you have any questions. You can reach me at lauren@ire.org or Contest Committee chair Jennifer LaFleur at jlafleur@irworkshop.org.
Eligible entries must have been published or aired between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2019. The deadline for submissions is January 12, 2020.
For details on how to enter, go here. To view past winners, go here.
We’re planning repeat hands-on classes at the upcoming NICAR Conference in New Orleans, and we need your help.
If you plan to join us in Louisiana for the 2020 NICAR Conference, please consider taking our survey to help us plan those repeat classes. Your responses will help us provide more of the most popular classes, allowing more attendees to get training in key technical skills such as spreadsheets, programming and data visualization. These classes are first-come, first-served in computer labs.
Click here to take the survey. We’ll keep it open until Friday, Dec. 20.
In addition to the open hands-on classes, we offer a limited number of longer hands-on workshops that require pre-registration and an additional fee to guarantee your seat. Learn more about our pre-registered workshops.
NICAR20 will feature nine computer labs and master classes, for a total of 321 hours of sessions — hands-on labs, panels, demos and small group discussions.
Ten newsrooms have been chosen to receive custom watchdog training in the coming year through IRE’s Total Newsroom Training program.
TNT provides two days of intensive, in-house training for small and medium-sized newsrooms dedicated to watchdog journalism. This is the seventh year IRE has offered the free program, which is supported through a grant.
TNT newsroom training is customized and includes two days of sessions ranging from public records battles to hands-on data analysis.
The newsrooms were chosen from more than 35 applications this year.
“Small and medium newsrooms can face challenges in producing watchdog stories with a real bite,” IRE Executive Director Doug Haddix said. “We’re thrilled that 10 more newsrooms across the country will receive TNT training to sharpen their investigative skills. Communities across America are hungry for stories that make a difference.”
Congratulations to the winning newsrooms:
Looking for a mentor? Would you like to be a mentor? If so, and you’ll be joining us for the 2020 NICAR Conference in New Orleans, you can now sign up for the conference mentorship program.
IRE will match mentors with mentees and arrange for them to meet at a breakfast during the conference. Please review the program guidelines before applying.
Prospective mentors and mentees: Click here to apply
The NICAR20 mentorship breakfast will be held from 7:30 - 8:45 a.m. on Friday, March 6, in the Carondelet room on the third floor of the conference hotel.
Space is limited in this popular program. IRE will accept applications until midnight CT on Friday, Feb. 7. If the slots are filled before then, your application will be added to a waitlist.
You must register for the conference by Feb. 10 in order to participate.
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