NICAR 2026

IRE Principles (Code of Conduct)

Registration Fees

Vote on this year's Lightning Talks!

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Lightning Talks are 5-minute presentations on particular skills, tools or techniques. Pitches are submitted and voted on by NICAR26 attendees. The presentations will be shown on Friday, March 6, as part of NICAR26.

Each attendee can vote for as many talks as you'd like, but please only submit your vote once (if you do, we’ll keep only your first submission).

The pitching and voting process is anonymous to encourage a more diverse group of people to submit pitches and bring more focus to the content of the talk in the voting process.

Voting has closed! We're excited to show off the final design at the NICAR Conference.

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.

PyCAR

• Instructor: Serdar Tumgoren, Big Local News
• Cost: $80
• Date & time: Thursday, March 6, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.

This hands-on workshop will teach journalists basic programming concepts using the Python programming language. The class will introduce language basics and useful libraries in the course of a typical reporting project: scraping data from the web, analyzing a spreadsheet and visualizing the results.

This session is good for beginners who want to get started with Python. Preregistration is required and seating is limited. You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to this training.

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.

Managing investigators: Leading those born to challenge authority

• Instructors: Emma Carew Grovum, Kimbap Media; Josh Hinkle, KXAN; Justin Myers, Chicago Sun-Times
• Cost: Free!
• Date & time: Friday, March 6, 9 - 11:15 a.m.

Being a news manager is already tough, but what if you supervise investigative journalists? They come with an extra layer of challenges because their very job (and likely their personality) makes them hyper-alert to authority figures. This course is designed to give you some tools and tactics to lead individuals and entire teams of investigators more effectively. Learn from three investigative managers from different media at different stages of their leadership careers. How did they launch into their roles, and what experience have they gained along the way? This course is for current investigative managers and anyone aspiring to step into such a position in the future.

NEW AT NICAR26: We’ll tailor portions of this course for people who may be navigating AI and also offer details on IRE’s new Managers of Color cohort. We’re also squeezing it into two hours of learning, then an hour-long management networking/meetup event. Oh… and it’s free to attend (typically, an additional fee is required)!

Topics will include: managing compassionately, hiring challenges, transitioning to management, forging partnerships, building relationships, handling resource cuts, organization/structure, tough decisions/conversations, in-house training/growth, delivering feedback, creating inclusive opportunities, and juggling responsibilities/projects/work.

Introduction to R

• Instructors: Liz Lucas & Mariia Novoselia, University of Missouri
• Cost: $45
• Date & time: Saturday, March 7, 9 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

We'll introduce you to R, a free, powerful open-source programming language that will take your data reporting to the next level. By the end of this three-hour session, you will be able to read data from common file types into R, clean and explore it, create visualizations, and make your entire data workflow reproducible. We'll also talk about how to find help when you're stuck.

Workshop prerequisites: This session will be most helpful if you’re comfortable working with data and you’re ready to take your skills to the next level.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Laptops will be provided for the training.

Deep dive: Navigating nonprofit data

• Instructors: Andrea Suozzo & Ellis Simani, ProPublica
• Cost: $30
• Date & time: Saturday, March 7, 10:15 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

More than half a million organizations — from your local humane society to some of the largest hospital chains in the nation — file annual public tax returns detailing revenue, expenses, staffing information, and more. In this hands-on session, we’ll use spreadsheets to dig into filing data and answer questions about nonprofit organizations that you can apply to nearly any beat or coverage area. No coding experience is necessary, but we’ll discuss ways to dig further into these datasets using code.

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate.

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.

From vibes to scores: Build your own AI benchmark

• Instructor: Jonathan Soma, Columbia University
• Cost: $45
• Date & time: Sunday, March 8, 9 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

You've built some sort of AI workflow - maybe a copy editor, idea generator, automated podcast, research assistant or tip pipeline - but how do you know how well it really works? And how do you know when it stops working?

In this session participants will learn how to define "good enough" for an AI use case, implement both code-based and LLM-as-judge scorers, build a small test representative test set, and run evaluations.

We'll be using Pydantic AI (Python) with the Braintrust platform, but concepts are perfectly portable to no-code tools or other evaluation toolkits.

Participants should have a basic understanding of Python and have at least basic experience with AI use cases.

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.