Promotions and new staff strengthen IRE

By Tyler Wornell  Tracking the flow of money in an election can be a crucial reporting tool for knowing who’s influencing elections and how. Tracking some of that money could prove difficult, though. In Friday’s CAR Conference panel, “Wagging the Dog: Using campaign finance data to cover the midterm election,” Denise Roth Barber from the…

By Virginia Ward A series of small compromises between players and coaches often lead to high-risk operations within sports organizations. Syracuse University professor Jodi Upton, USA Today database editor Christopher Schnaars and Raycom investigative producer Jill Riepenhoff shared their experience investigating college and youth sports.   From major infractions to Title IX investigations, journalists are uncovering…

By Alexis Allison “The only thing that white people have worse than black people is osteoporosis,” Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine, said during the “Investigating racial inequality” panel. “That’s the amazing thing about America,” Hannah-Jones said. “Anything you want to measure, somebody’s tracking it based on race.” Susan Smith…

By Jing Ren Steven Rich from The Washington Post, Sarah Ryley from The Trace and Annie Waldman from ProPublica shared their insights on how reporters should request open records at the state and national level at their CAR Conference panel. Waldman focused her presentation on clarifying the roles and functions of the Health Insurance Portability…

By Meredith McGrath In order to hold officials accountable and shine light on injustices, journalists are digging deep into the intricate data surrounding the drug world and court systems. Ed Silverman from STAT, Teri Sforza from the Orange County Register and Michael Braga from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune shared their stories of investigations, shed light on…

By Yue Yu Kevin Collier from BuzzFeed News, Neena Kapur from the New York Times and Margot Williams from The Intercept shared experiences and tips at the CAR Conference on constructing a secure workstation while pursuing sensitive leads. Collier talked briefly about the history of hackers working with journalists to produce big stories and getting…

By Virginia Ward In his CAR Conference session on demystifying data, Hadley Wickham said his job is to push R as far as it can possibly go. The chief scientist at RStudio develops free tools to explore R, an open-source statistical language. He is also an adjunct professor of statistics at the University of Auckland…

By Tyler Wornell The College Scorecard is a database with a treasure trove of data about higher education institutions, providing information about graduation rates, debt repayment rates and median income for career fields. There’s a wealth of story ideas sitting in the database, and knowing what data is there and how to use it can…

By Meredith McGrath Want to make sure your data is bulletproof and fact-checked so there aren’t any holes? Arm yourself with these tips from Tisha Thompson, investigative reporter for ESPN, and Sandhya Kambhampati, data reporter for ProPublica Illinois. Get organized When starting out, create a text file or a Word document and record basic information…

By Dariya Tsyrenzhapova Location is a common thread that can lead a story and reveal meaningful findings to better serve a community. According to Victor Hernandez of Banjo, geodata also serves as a catalyst enlightening “a technological and a reporting breakthrough” to tell hidden or overlooked stories in underserved communities. Joe Yerardi, a data reporter…