The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
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Independent reporters are encouraged to apply to Freelance Investigative Reporters and Editors (FIRE), for support with investigative stories. FIRE, a collaboration between Project Word and Investigative Reporters and Editors, offers stipends of up to $10,000, plus a suite of reporting tools. The application deadline is Thursday, March 23, 2017. To apply to FIRE, reporters are…
Read MoreBy Soo Rin Kim You’re a city government reporter and you’re on a deadline to write about a public hearing on the city’s zoning overhaul. You want to quote a resident who made an interesting comment at the hearing, but you forgot to get the exact spelling of his name (oops!). What do you do?…
Read MoreBy Amanda Nero The CAR Conference came and went much too quickly. Luckily, it’s nearly impossible to walk away from the conference empty-handed. Whether it’s technical skills or a deeper understanding of the data community and its importance, hopefully you walked away with a memento to remember the conference by. Here are some conference takeaways…
Read MoreBy Uliana Pavlova “If you think you are indispensable, just die and see what happens.” – Ron Nixon It seems almost impossible to find a work/life balance when you’re a journalist in a constantly shrinking industry. In the world of breaking news and Twitter, it’s hard to unplug. Nixon, a Washington correspondent with The New…
Read MoreBy Natalie Lung Two factors measure the impact of journalism: the output (how much work has been done), and its significance. But Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute (API), thinks newsrooms don’t actually measure much of either. At a 2017 CAR Conference panel, Rosenstiel spoke alongside Lindsay Green-Barber, former director of strategic…
Read MoreBy Dariya Tsyrenzhapova The definition of bots is murky, but expectations for the use of artificial intelligence tools in news organizations is on the rise. Bots, like automated personal assistants, can collect information, execute actions, generate content and even emulate humans, said Tiff Fehr, an interactives editor at The New York Times. Fehr moderated a 2017…
Read MoreBy Haotian Mai A panel of environmental reporters gathered at the 2017 CAR Conference to discuss stories based on public and private data sources. Dinah Pulver of the Dayton Beach News-Journal helps build and maintain the paper’s database of shark bites. In addition to their own database, Pulver also finds water.usgs.gov useful for a variety sources of…
Read MoreBy Abigail West The left brain is commonly understood as the logical side, and the right brain as the creative, intuitive side. This is not accurate. The correct way to look at the brain is that the left side is the verbal side. It is conceptual and anticipatory. The left brain will apply already known…
Read MoreBy Uliana Pavlova We live in the age of cybersecurity, when it is more important than ever to protect our information and sources digitally. Olivia Martin from the Freedom of the Press Foundation and Mike Tigas of ProPublica offered useful tips and tools on digital security for journalists at the CAR Conference. Why does security…
Read MoreBy Shane Sanderson When the Palm Beach Post obtained a spreadsheet made by a clerical worker at the local medical examiner’s office, reporters had to verify it. The office worker had noticed an escalation in the number of overdose deaths and she began a project recording the details. The resulting spreadsheet had something like 100…
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