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Some of the best reporters in the business have put together more than 5,500 guides to help you with your reporting. From step-by-step guides to computer-assisted reporting to tips on covering crime, the environment, education and more, our tipsheets are a great place to begin any investigation.
The National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting provides members access to government databases covering campaign finance, transportation, crime and more.
Communicate with some of the biggest names in investigative journalism on one of the IRE listservs. Get tips, make connections and advance your career.
Keep up with the latest and greatest investigations and tips through our magazine, The IRE Journal.
Here’s a recap of our current partnerships, how you can benefit and instructions on getting access to premium tools.
FOIAengine : Free 1-Year Subscription for IRE Professional members
(This is limited to members with a professional membership.)
FOIAengine, a tool created by PoliScio Analytics co-founders Randy Miller, an attorney, and John Jenkins, a journalist, searches requests made through the federal Freedom of Information Act nationwide. It helps replace the public record request database previously available at FOIAonline.gov, until the federal government shut it down in October 2023.
Like the government’s database, FOIAengine provides data about the requests themselves not the files, in essence creating a FOIA log to help users see what has already been requested. The new tool has more robust functionality and searching capabilities, and standardizes data from different agencies to make it easier to work with. You can search and filter records by agency, requester's organization or type (news media, law firm, financial institution, etc.), requester’s name, date or text of the request. You can also copy or export 100 records at a time to analyze in other tools, including Microsoft Excel. FOIAengine provides one-click links to LinkedIn (for researching requester backgrounds) and real-time stock-market data (for publicly traded companies)
What does this mean to you? As an IRE professional member, you can receive a free 1-year subscription to access FOIAengine, a searchable database with more than 230,000 FOIA record requests from 2021 to the present. It is updated in as close to real time as availability allows. This special subscription is the only way an individual can access the database. IRE is the only media association authorized to access this resource.
To request a subscription: Current IRE members with a professional membership should email amy@ire.org. If you’re not a current IRE member, you can join here. If you need to renew, sign into your IRE account and click "Members Dashboard" located in the upper right corner of the page.
Note: If you have questions about FOIAengine, please contact David Meyers, david@poliscio.com.
Cometdocs is retiring its API and moving to Xodo. IRE is working with Xodo and will provide more information when we have it.
You have probably encountered the problem of the PDF; the data and information are there, but locked in the PDF leaving you unable to filter, sort and work with the data in other ways. Cometdocs was an online file conversion and storage tool to help with PDF and other types of files.
Tableau Desktop and Tableau Prep Builder: Free license for IRE members
If you’ve ever analyzed public data, you know the pain of digging into the data only to find that it’s poorly structured, full of inaccuracies or just plain incomplete. You’re stuck fixing the data in Excel or writing complex calculations before you can answer a simple question.Tableau Prep Builder is designed to reduce the struggle of common yet complex tasks — such as joins, unions, pivots and aggregations — with a drag-and-drop visual experience. No scripting required. Once your data is prepped, connect to your data in Tableau Desktop to quickly find insights and answer questions. Read more about Tableau.
What does this mean to you? As an IRE member, you can receive a free license that includes both Tableau Prep Builder and Tableau Desktop.
To request a license: Current IRE members should email amy@ire.org. If you’re not a current IRE member, you can join or renew here. If you need to renew, you will need to sign into your IRE account and click "Members Dashboard" located in the upper right corner of the page. Note: If you have questions about Tableau, please contact public@tableau.com.
SmartProcure/GovSpend: Discounted subscription for IRE members
Receive a discounted subscription to the largest government purchasing database. The database contains more than 1.08 billion purchase orders from more than 21,000 local, state and federal government agencies in the U.S. SmartProcure is now GovSpend. Read more about GovSpend.
What does this mean to you: As an IRE member, you can receive a SmartProcure/GovSpend subscription for $1,500 annually (an 86 percent discount from their subscription rate of $11,000 per year). Your subscription will give you “SmartSearch” access to SmartProcure/GovSpend. This includes unlimited searches in SmartProcure/GovSpend’s database, government and vendor profiles and key contacts, email alerts for saved search updates and more.
To get a subscription: Current IRE members should email smartprocure@ire.org. If you’re not a current IRE member, you can join or renew here. If you need to renew, you will need to sign into your IRE account and click "Members Dashboard" located in the upper right corner of the page.
Note: If you have questions about SmartProcure/GovSpend, please contact mdigeronimo@govspend.com.
PacerMonitor: Discounted subscription for IRE members
A legal research tool created to help people follow federal court cases, PacerMonitor has expanded from its initial focus on bankruptcy and now includes all federal courts, making it a useful tool for many reporters and editors. It has a database of more than 140 million PACER documents. PacerMonitor also allows users to set new case filing and docket alerts to stay on top of cases proactively. Read more about PacerMonitor.
What does this mean to you: As an IRE member, you receive a 50% discount which is $24.50/mo for the Plus plan and $49.50 for the Professional plan, which includes full database access, advanced searching capabilities and the ability to set up alerts.
To request a subscription: First, requesters need their own PACER credentials to get started (to set up those credentials, go here). Current IRE members should email amy@ire.org. If you’re not a current IRE member, you can join or renew here. If you need to renew, you will need to sign into your IRE account and click "Members Dashboard" located in the upper right corner of the page.
Note: If you have questions about PacerMonitor, please contact christopher@pacermonitor.com.
And more!
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