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3 ideas for covering America’s booming prison population

The United States is a world leader in incarceration, with more than 2 million people in prisons and jails. At the 2014 IRE Conference Barry Krisberg, a senior fellow at UC Berkeley Law School, discussed a handful of trends for journalists to follow in the coming year. Here are three to keep an eye on:…

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Audio from 2014 Watchdog Workshops now available for download

Participants at the Jacksonville Watchdog Workshop. (Photo courtesy of Tracey Eaton) Couldn’t make it to one of our Watchdog Workshops this year? We recorded audio from many of our panels and, thanks to a generous grant from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, have made it available for download online. We have recordings from…

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IRE Radio Podcast | Navigating Nonprofits

Americans donate about $300 billion a year to charities, with about 30 percent of that taking place in December. But not all charities are good stewards of donated dollars. For our last podcast of 2014 we’re talking about how to investigate nonprofits and charities. Here’s the lineup: Justin Elliott of ProPublica talks about investigating the…

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AUDIO: How to find specific forgotten victims

At the 2014 IRE Conference, a panel of three journalists, moderated by New England Center for Investigative Reporting senior investigative reporter Jenifer McKim, talked about finding how they found forgotten victims and tackled overlooked issues. Senior citizens in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, Detroit citizens unfairly affected by the city’s recent bankruptcy, black lung-afflicted…

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IRE Radio Podcast | Housing Horror Stories

It’s a special Halloween episode of the IRE Radio Podcast, and this week we’re telling some housing horror stories. Here’s the lineup: Marisa Kwiatkowski of The Indianapolis Star talks about her story “The exorcisms of Latoya Ammons,” which became the most-read story in the Star’s history. Kate Berry of American Banker explains “zombie foreclosures” and…

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From the IRE Archive: Gary Webb’s “Dark Alliance”

Interested in learning more about the story behind the new movie, “Kill the Messenger“? Listen to this panel from the 1997 IRE National Conference in Phoenix, Ariz. titled “Can Investigative Reporting Go Too Far?”. In the early 90’s investigative reporter Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News dug into the CIA’s involvement of cocaine…

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AUDIO: How to structure your story

You’ve done all of your reporting and now it’s time to write, but how do you structure your story? Jacqui Banaszynski, winner of the 1988 Pulitzer Prize in feature writing, explored this issue during the 2014 IRE Conference in San Francisco, demystifying the process and offering insight on how to think beyond the traditional inverted…

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IRE Radio Podcast | Policing the Players

You don’t have to be a full-time sports reporter to investigate athletes. This week we’re looking at sports investigations on several levels: college, military and professional. Join us for tips on getting around secretive athletics departments and digging deeper when players get in trouble. Here’s the lineup: Tom Roeder of the Colorado Springs Gazette discusses “Broken…

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AUDIO: Tips for getting key sources to talk

Investigative reporters spend months on story basics, building data and documents. But without the right sources, even the most telling facts can read a bit, well, boring. With that in mind, four battle-tested investigative reporters spoke at the 2014 IRE Conference on the topic of building trust with sources. Ellen Gabler, of the Milwaukee Journal…

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IRE Radio Podcast | The dark side of the oil & gas boom

Think oil and gas stories are just for reporters in a few key states? Think again. There are more than 1.1 million active oil and gas wells in 36 states. On this podcast we’ll explore the dark side of the oil and gas boom with journalists who have investigated elements of the industry. Here’s the…

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