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Strategies for getting the data and documents you need

By Quint Forgey In our seemingly endless quest to obtain government documents, it’s important to recognize and alleviate the often tense relationships between reporters and public information officers. During Friday’s panel discussion, “They’ve got it, you want it: Getting data and docs,” Rich Orman, senior deputy district attorney of Colorado’s 18th Judicial District, said bureaucrats…

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Humanizing data: Finding the people behind the numbers

By Maggie Angst As a data journalist, it’s easy to get immersed in a database and forget the groups and individuals who are affected by the data in the story. Data can be expansive and intriguing, but what matters most is explaining its real-world impact and relevance on specific people and communities, according to panelists…

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Getting to know Matt Goldberg of NBC4 Los Angeles

Matt Goldberg and Taylor Bishop  Taylor A. Bishop talks with Matt Goldberg, managing editor at KNBC-TV in Los Angeles and vice president of the IRE Board of Directors. Bishop: What do you do as a managing editor in news? Goldberg: I do somewhere around six hours of news a day. In addition, I also oversee our…

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College professors share tips, ideas for teaching data journalism

By D.B. Narverson Veteran educators offered three key tips for teaching data journalism during a CAR Conference session Thursday: Teach so that each lesson builds into the next, and review often. Use topics of interest to students, whether it’s restaurant health inspections, the plight of journalists overseas or a stray dog. Create situations where students…

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Mining past and future census data to predict diversity in race, income and aging

By Kouichi Shirayanagi The United States is becoming increasingly racially diverse, especially in the West, Southwest and Southeast. However, the Midwest and New England still remain heavily white. The Hispanic population is growing at the fastest rate. Stephanie Ewert, chief of the Foreign-Born Population Branch at the U.S. Census Bureau, said that especially among children,…

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Enhance your breaking news reporting with data and documents

By Quint Forgey The old newspaper adage, “there is no news in the newsroom,” no longer applies to American media. That’s because journalists can easily access publicly available data to quickly enhance reporting and put journalists hours – even days – ahead of competitors when local news breaks. In Thursday’s session, “Data for breaking news,”…

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How journalists can apply ethical frameworks to web scraping

Web scraping serves as a helpful last resort reporting tool for data journalists, but it comes with its fair share of ethical and technical concerns. At this year’s NICAR conference, Martin Burch of The Wall Street Journal, Ricardo Brom of La Nación, Amanda Hickman of BuzzFeed’s Open Lab for Journalism, Technology, and the Arts, and…

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NICAR 2016 schedule updates and changes

Welcome! Please see below changes to the schedule and other notes. For the most up-to-date schedule and description information, be sure to visit the conference website or app.   Session changes and additions NEW! Stealth project management: How to get work done even if you’re not “technically” in charge Thursday, 3:30-4:30 p.m. in Colorado E…

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Teaching coding concepts doesn’t have to be boring

By Daniela Sirtori-Cortina Before starting her session on programming languages, Lindsey Cook asked attendees to put away their laptops and use a piece of paper. For the next hour, she illustrated programming concepts through interactive activities reminiscent of a grade-school environment. “Welcome to the NICAR session that’s run like a fifth grade classroom,” Cook, data…

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