Learn how to investigate local government on a shoestring budget

IRE and Poynter announced a low-cost investigative workshop: Investigating Local Government on a Shoestring Budget.

With growing Medicare and pension costs, 2013 will be a rough year for local governments that face significant budget deficits in a slowly recovering economy. These governments face critical decisions, IRE and Poynter are offering  training to ensure journalists are well equipped to cover them.

In this training you will learn how to use spreadsheet programs like Excel, you will learn critical thinking skills that look beyond announcements and events and you will discover corners of the "hidden web" where some of the best story ideas live.

The workshop is especially focused toward newsrooms that do not have big budgets or staffs to produce major investigative projects.

Trainers for this event include:

• Al Tompkins
  Senior Faculty, Broadcast and Online
• Mark Horvit
  Executive Director, Investigative Reporters & Editors
• Jaimi Dowdell
  Training Director, Investigative Reporters & Editors
• John Maines
  Computer-assisted Reporting Editor, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
• Nancy Amons
  Investigative Reporter, WSMV-TV, Nashville
• Kris Hundley
  Reporter, Tampa Bay Times
• Angie Drobnic Holan
  Deputy Editor of PolitiFact and Editor of PolitiFact Florida

The workshop is open to TV, radio, print and online media. Non-traditional journalists and journalists from nonprofit groups are encouraged to apply. The cost of the workshop is $300, a lowered tuition cost made possible by a grant from The Buck Foundation.

Click here to learn more information and register for this event.