The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. Add to that more than 3,000 tipsheets from our national conferences on how to cover specific beats or do specific stories and you have a resource that no reporter or editor should be without. These stories and tipsheets are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Logged-in members can view the tipsheets free online:
Search results for "computer programing" ...
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Human-assisted reporting: How to create robot reporters in your own image
Welch goes over how to, via programming, extract information from a continuous data stream, and the potential stories that may come out of it.
Tags: programming; computer-assisted reporting; CAR; data analysis
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Programming: Learn the basic lingo and gain new powers
DeBarros talks about basic programming skills that will unleash a wealth of potential for reporters. He defines a number of programming languages and explains the application of each.
Tags: programming; computer language; C#; JavaScript; Perl; PHP; Python; Ruby; SQL
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Moving from Excell 2003 to Excel 2007: Welcome to the Ribbon
Dowdell discusses the changes between Excel 2003 and Excel 2007. Basic differences in the layout of the programs, and the introduction of the "ribbon" are addressed. "The "Ribbon" is what Microsoft is calling this new interface. It has gotten rid of the menus and added a series of tabs." Dowdell discusses where to find and how to use different fucntions in the 2007 version of Excel.
Tags: Excel 2003; Excel 2007; ribbon; pivot tables; filtering; sort; sorting;
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Excel/Access User Defined Functions`
Harbord discusses how Visual Basic for Applications can be used to expand the capabilities of Excel and Access. \\\"Based on the original Basic programming language from the early 70’s, this version is built in to all Microsoft Office products and is similar to Visual Basic version 6.0. Each product like Excel has special capabilities in VBA for accessing and manipulating its specific “objects” such as cells and ranges of cells. (Called the Object Model).\\\"
Tags: visual basic; excel; access; object model; VBA; functions; query
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From Data Analysis to Programming
This tipsheet is an outline of Perry and Willis' panel on data analysis to programming. They detail free Web resources; assorted data structures; tutorials on computer languages; version control; programming techniques; and how to read and share code.
Tags: programming; SQL; data; programming language; code; tutorial
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Programming skills: An introduction to Perl and regular expressions
Perry's PowerPoint covers Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language. With a disclaimer that you can't learn Perl in an hour, Perry's presentation aims to provide: a basic understand of the philosophy behind Perl; introduction to Perl syntax; introduction tp basic regular expression syntax; common Perl idioms; common errors; and a list of where to find help.
Tags: Perl; syntax; Practical Extraction and Report Language; UNIX; regular expressions; parsing data;
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Wiki Panel Handout and Notes
This handout, taken from the Reporter's Cookbook, discusses how to create a newsroom wiki. It covers how to begin, how to maintain the wiki, and how to extend it and make it into an even better tool.
Tags: wiki; intranet; internet; computer programming
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Using Instiki
Willis discusses Instiki, which is software written in Ruby and can run on any platform. He explains installation and setup, features of Instiki, and how to maintain it.
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Learning About Python
Willis goes over the basic concepts of using Python. He also discusses strings, lists and tuples. Finally, Willis offers some resources to help you learn Python.
Tags: programming language; data analysis; computer-assisted reporting
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Web Scraping: Techniques and Challenges
Johnson discusses how to use Perl to scrape websites for data so you aren't stuck with a tedious cutting and pasting job whenever you look for new data online. She offers examples of scripts that she wrote for this purpose.
Tags: programming language; Perl; data extraction; scripts; computer programing