Three major investigative reports that used social science research methods to: expose serial killings, shine a light on school cheating, and reveal truths about the home foreclosure crisis were named winners of the 2011 Philip Meyer Award.

First place is awarded to "Murder Mysteries" by Thomas Hargrove of Scripps Howard News Service. The series resulted in what experts say is the most complete database available of unsolved murders. Hargrove developed a unique algorithm to identify the likely traces of serial murders. Police in at least eight cities have acknowledged that the clusters found by Hargrove are either confirmed serial cases ...

Learn how to quickly visualize data and publish it interactively to the web without programming.

Tableau Public will host two, four-hour hands-on training sessions Thursday, Feb. 23, at the CAR Conference on how to use the free software to visualize data and post it online. The sessions will cover the basics of Tableau to create interactive data visualizations on short deadlines, as well as how to create more complex visualizations. 

Tableau for Beginners will cover:

• Connect to Excel files and other data
• Create maps and charts
• Format them beautifully
• Make them interactive

Tableau for Pros will cover:

• Clean and format ...

As tens of thousands of soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan, journalists will have their hands full reporting on topics from veteran homelessness to mental illness. How better to hold the government accountable than by arming yourself with the tools to decipher complex data and the steps to finding compelling stories.

March 5 to 7 the New England Center for Investigative Reporting will offer a free training at Boston University where journalists, bloggers and citizen journalists can learn from veteran affairs experts.

IRE Executive Director Mark Horvit will present during the workshop, along with James Dao, of The New York ...

Don't forget to submit your best investigative reporting to the 2011 IRE Awards contest. The postmark deadline is January 13th, 2012.

2011 marked the 33rd year for the IRE Awards, which honor the best in investigative reporting in all types of media. This year, to better reflect the evolving nature of the industry, and the challenges inherent in the categories as they existed, we have restructured the categories for our awards.

For more information on how we've changed or for details on how to enter, click here.