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 "investigations" ...
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Campaign finance the data science way
The Center for Investigative Reporting and IRE teamed up with the San Francisco data science company Kaggle to help bridge the gap in journalism between hacking, math and substantive expertise. They challenged data scientists to approach a database journalists have looked at a million times over: federal campaign contributions. We'll introduce you to the winner of the competition and discuss the tools the data scientists used and their results.
Tags: hacking; math; data; campaign contributions; campaign finance
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Data tactics for the well-rounded business reporter
Business is all about numbers and data. In this session, you will get tips for finding and using data to beef up your stories about business and economics. No heavy lifting here, but it would be useful to have some experience with spreadsheets.
Tags: business reporting; business; data; numbers
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Bringing Excel to the web with Excel 2013 and SkyDrive
Learn some of Microsoft Excel 2013's new features and talk about how to improve your stories and how to engage viewers with your sites for free. Look at different examples of how Excel has been implemented in storytelling.
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Web tools for investigators
Learn what free online tools that will help you to enhance on your reporting and investigation. Get tips on social media searches, documents, Web scraping and visualizations.
Tags: Free tools; online tools; story visualization; reporting
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Waste investigations for any community
Get tips on how to investigate government in terms of who gets audited, what data sets are available and see how that information can lead to local news stories.
Tags: Government; government agencies; fraud; investigation;
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Quick Hit Investigations Tip Sheet
The tipsheet provides "fishing list" with suggestions for easy investigations.
Tags: investigative; quick; fishing
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Doing Student Investigations with Class
Dufresne offers investigative tips that are modified for the challenges of working with students in a 14-week semester.
Tags: student projects
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What You Need To Know To Get Quality Video For Your Project
In the world of broadcast journalism, a great investigative story is bolstered by great video. Learn tips and tricks about how to use your camera to your advantage in this tipsheet.
Tags: Camera; Video; B-Roll; Interviews; Shooting; Camera Basics; Shooting basics
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People, Paper, & Passion: How To Get The Impossible
Great investigations require great people, documents, and passion. Learn how to incorporate all three into your investigations with this tipsheet.
Tags: People; Power; Passion; Documents; Freedom of Information
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The Ask: Requesting and Negotiating For Records/Data
A guide on how to procure the documents you need in order to launch your investigation. This step-by-step tipsheet takes you through each individual step to gaining access to government records.
Tags: Burlington Free Press; FOI; Open Government Laws; Freedom of Information;