The IRE office will be closed from December 25th to January 5th.
NICAR talk
Five databases at NICAR now offered for free to members
Among some other changes happening at the NICAR Data Library (go here to read more about them), we are now providing five databases for free to IRE members: Federal Election Commission’s Federal Campaign Contributions, updated weekly, contains campaign contribution information for all candidates seeking federal office and all federal political action committees. The individual contributions table includes…
Read MoreNICAR Data Library releases updated DOE campus crime data
The NICAR Database Library has updated the Department of Education’s Campus Crime data to include the most recent reports on alleged crime, arrests and discipline reported for 2012. Buy it here. What’s in it? The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act is a federal law that requires colleges…
Read MoreHow to survive your first CAR story
By Jennifer Johnson, The Grand Forks Herald Spreadsheet programs like Excel have always intimidated me. Sure, I dabbled in them a few times. I pulled up pre-formatted sheets and leafed through them. I used basic formulas and figured out percentages. And I also attended a two-day IRE training with fellow reporters at the Grand Forks…
Read MoreThe road to health is paved with good data
This was originally published on the ProPublica Nerd Blog. By Ryann Grochowski Jones, ProPublica I think I’m a decent arbiter of people’s appreciation of data. I worked at IRE’s data library as a grad student and I’ve attended four consecutive NICAR conferences. At ProPublica, I work with complex data sets every day. I help run…
Read MoreWeb scraping: Sessions, tools and a discount
Ever wanted to scrape data from the web but didn’t know how? Here’s your chance to learn. We’re offering two sessions on web scraping at the IRE Conference in San Francisco, June 26-29. In addition to that, Helium Scraper has given us some coupon codes for a limited number of IRE members to receive 50…
Read MoreHow Mike Soraghan built an oil spills database
See this post and more like it at NICAR talk, our data blog: ire.org/nicar Mike Soraghan is an oil and gas reporter at EnergyWire (an arm of E&E Publishing) and former NICAR bootcamper from 2013. For those of you who have been to bootcamp, you remember Open Lab, held (almost) every night after class wraps…
Read MoreUpdated FBI Uniform Crime Reports now available
The NICAR Database Library has updated the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, one of the best resources for national crime statistics. The most current reports are for 2012. WHAT’S IN IT? Law enforcement agencies around the country voluntarily* submit reports to the FBI on what are known as “index” crimes: Murder, nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery,…
Read MoreThe beginning of NICAR talk
Welcome to the inauguration of the NICAR talk blog. Here we will discuss all things NICAR: data, FOIA requests, tools, skills, tactics, tips, and anything else that relates to CAR. Join in the discussion by leaving a thoughtful comment.
Read MoreTwo Small Business Administration databases updated at NICAR
The NICAR database library has updated data from two Small Business Administration loan programs: The 7a loans program provides loans to small business owners who can’t obtain financing through traditional channels. The database covers loans from 1950 – Sept. 30, 2013. See below for more details. The disaster loans program is the primary form of…
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