The Red River in Fargo, N.D., has reached record heights and is still rising. IRE has compiled a list of resources to help you cover this flood, localize the story for your area and assess whether your community is prepared for a similar disaster.

Flooding is nothing new to the Midwest. Last year Cedar Rapids, Iowa was left underwater as "the rain kept coming, upstream river gauges quit working just when they were needed most, and the predicted flooding was woefully wrong," said reporter Zack Kucharski of The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Kucharski spoke about the role databases ...

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Several Web sites and documents can help journalists track federal stimulus spending and the ongoing economic turmoil, according to Ron Nixon, a reporter for The New York Times.

Taxpayers for Common Sense aims to provide more transparency in government spending. USA Spending is the federal government’s site for tracking all federal contracts, grants and awards. Another site, Footnoted.org, highlights what public companies try to downplay in footnotes of their filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC offers a “Beginners’ Guide to Financial Statements.” Nixon also recommended an online booklet from Merrill Lynch on “How ...

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More than 70 people gathered in the desert  – presenters, students, border journalists of all ages and experiences — at the University of Texas El Paso for IRE’s first bilingual version of our Watchdog Workshop. The event included hands-on CAR training and lectures on topics including immigration, storytelling and organized crime by mostly bilingual presenters and IRE members who came in from Texas,Florida, New Mexico and Mexico. On Friday, IRE, with sponsorship support from Hearst newspapers, offered a dinner to 50 border editors and reporters in honor of Armando Rodriguez, the El Diario reporter killed last year. At the event ... Read more ...