NICAR 2026

IRE Principles (Code of Conduct)

Registration Fees

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Want to supercharge your data skills? Consider registering for one of these in-depth hands-on workshops, which require an additional fee to participate. Space is limited in these popular classes.

⚠️ Please note that the process for registering for these workshops has changed.

First LLM Classifier: Practical AI in the newsroom

• Instructor: Ben Welsh, Reuters
• Cost: $45
• Date & time: Thursday, March 6, 9 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Learn how journalists use large-language models to organize and analyze massive datasets.

Take this three-hour class to get hands-on experience creating a machine-learning model that can classify the text recorded in campaign contributions, crime reports, legislative bills, consumer complaints and other newsworthy data.

You will learn how to:

• Replace a complex machine-learning system with a simple LLM system
• Write a prompt that classifies text into predefined categories
• Evaluate your results using a rigorous, scientific approach
• Improve your prompt by training it with rules and examples

By the end, you will understand how the new class of LLM classifiers can outperform traditional machine-learning methods with significantly less code, and you will be ready to write one yourself.

Anyone who has dabbled with code and AI is qualified for this class. A curious mind and good attitude are all that’s required.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Laptops will be provided.

Fun with shapes: Scripted mapping in R or Python

• Instructors: Alexandra Kanik, Hearst; Ryan Little, Baltimore Banner; Cam Rodriguez, The New York Times
• Cost: $45
• Date & time: Thursday, March 6, 2:30 - 5 p.m.

Let's face it, QGIS is the Excel of geospatial analysis. Sure, doing simple mapping in it and ArcGIS is a blast, but executing complex, reproducible joins and measurements can be a real drag. Taking a more scripted approach is way less of a buzzkill, especially when you need to revisit your earlier work or share with others.

Whether you choose R or Python, follow along from mapping basics to more complex techniques that will make your next geospatial analysis a walk in the park. Cut loose, write some replicable code and have fun with shapes!

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. To get the most out of this session, you should have a working knowledge of both GIS/mapping techniques and some experience with either Python or R. Laptops will be provided.

Is your map rigged? A hands-on guide to finding gerrymandering with R

• Instructor: Andrew Pantazi, Axios
• Cost: $45
• Date & time: Friday, March 6, 9 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

Stop guessing if a map is biased. This hands-on session will teach you the definitive workflow to find the evidence, cutting through the political spin and offering an expert method: Comparing the enacted map to thousands of computer-drawn, neutral alternatives.

In this session, you will:

• Build a block-level dataset: Use the geomander package to disaggregate precinct-level election results down to the census block. This lets you build back any map—enacted or proposed—and analyze its political performance.
• Run simulations: Use redist to generate thousands of alternative maps based on criteria you set, like compactness, VRA compliance or minimizing neighborhood splits.
• Find the evidence: Use redistmetrics to score the enacted plan against your simulations. You'll measure partisan bias, compactness and county/city/neighborhood splits to see if the real map is a statistical outlier.
• Map the harm: We'll go beyond simple scores to find exactly which neighborhoods have their votes "packed" or "cracked," identifying the real-world impact of a gerrymander.

You will leave with the code and the method to build a data-driven investigation.

How many people has ICE arrested in your area?

• Instructor: Caitlin McGlade, Arizona Republic
• Cost: $45
• Date & time: Saturday, March 7, 9 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

You'll need to clean some data to find out.

The U.C. Berkeley-based Deportation Data Project has published a trove of immigration enforcement data via FOIAs that many newsrooms have been using. The possible stories you can turn from it seem endless -- but the most common question your editors are likely to ask may be the toughest one to answer: How many people are arrested in our county or our state?

At least 20 percent of the rows are missing values in the column that should tell us what state each person was arrested in. There are ways around this problem, and they involve some careful surgery.

Your instructor will guide you through how she captured as many arrests in North Carolina as were possible to pin down so you can replicate her methods for your state.

Attendees should be familiar with Python for data analysis.

Using coding agents for data analysis

• Instructor: Simon Willison, Datasette
• Cost: $45
• Date & time: Saturday, March 7, 2:30 - 6 p.m.

Coding agents such as Claude Code and OpenAI Codex are mainly marketed at developers, but they're actually applicable to a much wider array of problems, including data analysis, data cleaning, web scraping and other tasks commonly faced by data journalists.

In this session, you'll learn how to apply these tools to both simple and ambitious data reporting projects. Attendees will go away with a very powerful new tool for collecting, exploring, analyzing and presenting data.

Scraping with Python

• Instructors: Aïcha Camara, McClatchy; Alexandra Glorioso, Miami Herald
• Cost: $45
• Date & time: Saturday, March 7, 2:30 - 6 p.m.

In this session you will learn how to investigate websites, evaluate project difficulty and use Python to scrape data that is not otherwise easily obtained with out-of-the-box tools.

Instructors will walk you through a project to scrape data from the Florida Financial System to show you what a difficult scraping project looks like and how to understand the necessary code and libraries that go into scraping the data.

How to register for a paid workshop at NICAR 2026

First step: Log into our new member portal. (If you need help, click on "Signup/login help" on this page.) Once you're signed in, the process depends on whether you've already registered for the conference.

If you've already registered for the conference ...

Navigate to Events > My Events:

Scroll through the "My Registrations" list until you find the NICAR 2026 Conference. Click the event name to show more details. Click the "Change Workshops" link near the bottom of the detail section:

Finally, navigate the checkout process to register for the workshops you're interested in.

If you haven't registered for the conference yet ...

Click here to register for the conference. As you navigate the checkout process, you'll have an opportunity to sign up for the workshops you're interested in.

If you're joining us for the conference and are hoping to get (or give) one-on-one guidance, you can sign up for the mentorship program by filling out this form. Can't make it to NICAR? Look for or become a mentor through IRE's partnership with JournalismMentors.org.

IRE will match mentors with mentees and arrange for them to meet at a breakfast during the conference. The NICAR26 mentorship breakfast will be on Friday, March 6, from 7:45 to 8:45 a.m.

This is a popular program and space is limited, so be sure to apply now! The deadline to apply is Friday, Feb. 13. If the slots are filled before then, your application will be added to a waitlist. Please also note that you must register for the conference by Monday, Feb. 16, to participate.