Feature
Don’t know what to attend at NICAR26? The IRE staff is here to help!
So you’ve landed in Indianapolis. You’re at the JW Marriott. You’re checking the schedule and….. whoa. It’s pretty overwhelming, right? With more than 200 hours of programming spanning nearly a week, it’s hard to plan what to see, who to talk to and when to go where. But the IRE staff is here to help…
Read MoreThe Alabama Solution: Journalists Hope to Inspire More Ethical Prison Reporting
By Victoria Valenzuela, independent journalist When Charlotte Kaufman and Andrew Jarecki visited Easterling prison in Alabama as media seven years ago, they didn’t know what to expect — but they knew that it is rare to get an opportunity to report from a prison, so they took the chance. What started as a filmed visit…
Read MoreInside The New York Times’s A.I. toolkit
Inside The New York Times’s A.I. toolkit By Duy Nguyen, The New York Times; Illustration by Juliana Castro Varón, The New York Times The daily reality of journalism often involves painstaking work that, while important, has little to do with breaking a story. It’s the mundane task of sifting through thousands of documents, the repetitive…
Read MoreHonoring longtime IRE member and mentor Susan Carroll
Honoring longtime IRE member and mentor Susan Carroll By Lise Olsen, The Texas Observer As a monster storm approached in August 2017, my friend Susan Carroll arranged for others to care for her young children in order to camp out in the Houston Chronicle newsroom along busy Loop 610. She stayed there awaiting the arrival…
Read MoreRemembering Paul Williams
By Doug Meigs In towering all-caps, a 1972 Omaha Sun headline proclaimed: “BOYS TOWN: AMERICA’S WEALTHIEST CITY?” followed by a biblical quote: “‘Give an account of thy stewardship…’ (Luke, 16)” So began an eight-page broadsheet investigation into the murky finances of Boys Town, an esteemed charitable institution that Father Edward J. Flanagan (now on the…
Read MoreCapturing global investigative journalism’s oral history
By Silas Tsang, WTOL-TV There is a new effort to document the oral history of investigative journalism around the world. It’s the brainchild of investigative reporter Adiel Kaplan at Columbia Journalism School. The goal of her project is to preserve key perspectives on how the methods and tools of accountability reporting spread globally since the…
Read MoreDespite attacks, industry turmoil, journalists declare: We are staying
By IRE staff Editor’s note: Legendary journalist James B. Steele was one of the first to join IRE after it started in 1975 and has stayed active throughout the years in the organization, serving as a mentor for countless young journalists and participating in dozens of conference sessions, among other roles. A former contributing editor at…
Read MoreProbing the ethics of controversial brain research
By Audrey Carleton, Bruce Gil, Emily Nadal and Zachary Smith The four of us met in a classroom in midtown Manhattan in the fall of 2021 — donning masks during the throes of the pandemic. Then final-semester graduate students at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, we…
Read MoreNew survey reveals state of investigative journalism
By Gerry Lanosga, Indiana University, and Brant Houston, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Continued expansion in the nonprofit sector, a diversifying investigative workforce, and growing pessimism about the future of journalism are among the main takeaways from a broad national survey of IRE members conducted in 2023. Our survey of membership — made possible through the…
Read MoreThe sun is setting on government transparency in Florida – and secrecy creep is affecting the rest of the US, too
By David Cuillier, Brechner Freedom of Information Project Florida, the “Sunshine State,” once known as a beacon of government transparency, is growing ever darker, and the clouds are spreading throughout the United States. From March 16-22, 2025, the nation celebrates the 20th anniversary of national Sunshine Week, which originated in Florida, historically home to the…
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