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 "hands on" ...
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Tile Mill: Hands-on Tutorial
This tutorial shows you how to find the murder rate and poverty rate.
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Strategies for Covering the Police Beat and Doing Quick Enterprise Stories
Get tips from Thompson, an IRE award winning reporter, that include getting your hands on police documents(blank ones are important too), riding along with officers on duty, and acquiring the best sources.
Tags: police beat; courthouse beat; cops; police department; police documents
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NICAR Hands-On: Census Data with Tableau Public
This tipsheet provides step-by-step instructions for visualizing census data using Tableau Public.
Tags: census data; mapping; visualization; data viz; data visualization; Tableau Public;
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Ready when the story breaks
This tipsheet offers ways to include data in a breaking news story or when you're on a tight deadline. The author offers a database of websites to keep on hand, as well as tips on analyzing data "using your own software."
Tags: databases; raw data; analyze; plane crash; car accident; OSHA; NOAA; NICAR; CAR
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Investigative Breaking News
This tipsheet helps ready a reporter for breaking news stories. It beings with having the right training and tools at hand, and includes ideas for collaboration and engaging the team when the story breaks. Borowski also touches on what to consider when the dust settles - is there a bigger story here; something to develop down the road?
Tags: breaking news; databases; social media; reporting; management; sources
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Covering Invisible Populations
Teichroeb outlines lessons she's learned while covering marginalized people and populations - such female prisoners and abused students. Much of her tipsheet touches on issues of developing the trust of your sources. Teichroeb includes links to a handful of stories she completed at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Tags: marginalized populations; trauma; abuse; sources; documents; ethics; conflict of interest; Dart Center on Journalism and Trauma and Dart Society
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Covering the Military Beat
Capaccio discusses the challenges of reporting on the military. He suggests resources to familiarize yourself with when you begin to cover this beat, and how to organize yourself so you have the needed resources at hand - from Pentagon URLs to up-to-date phone lists. Included in this document is a chart of Military Insignia and what each stands for by specific branch of the military. He also includes sample documents from military resources
Tags: military; contacts; Pentagon; Pen and Sword: A Journalist's Guide to Covering the Military; Ed Offley; Army; Marines; POGO; Project on Government Oversight; The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment; CSBA
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Checking for illegal campaign activity
Hall gives great tips on looking for illegal activities in campaigns in this handout. Some of the advice is common sense but much of it is useful for new people to the beat and experienced hands as well.
Tags: campaign finance; campaigns; corruption; conflict of interest; sources; government; elections; politics; political parties; caucuses
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A hands-on introduction to social network analysis
Walmsley gives a basic introduction to social network anaylsis and a few of its possible uses.
Tags: social networks; social network anaylsis; terrorism; intelligence agencies; nodes; degree centrality