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 "matching" ...
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Evaluating State Open Records Laws and Practices
Use Ginley's Powerpoint to check up on your state's open records law and how they match up to others.
Tags: open records; public access
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Computational Journalism and the 5 Ws
Hamilton describes computational journalism ("the combination of data, algorithms, and knowledge from social science to yield information that can supplement and, in the future, substitute for part of journalism’s watchdog function"), and describes the "why, what, when, who and when" it is necessary for effective reporting.
Tags: computational journalism; social science research; information demands; research; statistical analysis; visualization; mapping; matching; personalization
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Sex offenders in long-term care facilities
This tipsheet explains how the Tulsa World matched a nursing home database with one of sex offenders and found that 18 registered sex offenders were living in nursing homes. Branstetter offers advice for the actual data analysis, such as how to clean and standardize the data, as well as advice about the shoe-leather reporting aspect of the story. Finally, Branstetter suggests some online resources that are helpful for covering this topic.
Tags: sex offenders; matching; joining databases; Medicare; retirement; assisted-living
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Tracking the dollar in government
D'Ambrosio gives tips on how to root out "legalized corruption": political payback to friends and financial supporters of candidates. He notes which government records to look for and where to find them, and gives two SQL query formulas to match criteria in separate electronic databases.
Tags: tracking the dollar; CAR; computer-assisted reporting; check register; contracts database; election finance database; pensions database
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Broadcast skills: Blending CAR into TV
Pipitone lists several potential sources for data as well as ideas for broadcast journalists to match databases for excellent computer-assisted reporting.
Tags: CAR; broadcast; TV; matching data; databases; CAR mentality
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Cash Correlation
Jonathan Salant briefly describes five web sites that offer detailed information related to different aspects of campaign finances. These include the matching of campaign contributions to votes won, giving patterns of local companies and attempts at expanding the base of fund raisers, among others.
Tags: www.fec.gov; www.opensecrets.org; www.fecinfo.com; political action committee contributions; GOP; PAC
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Geocoding: Making your point with maps
This tipsheet helps reporters get familiar with the concept of geocoding and start using it in a practical way. LaFleur guides the reader through getting ArcCatalog to add geocoding services, geocoding files, and improving your matches to get better results.
Tags: geocoding; mapping; ArcView; ArcCatalog; GIS
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Legislative Reporting and CAR at Virginia Commonwealth University
This handout offers a few tips on how to identify the biggest donors to the state legislature, and how to match this information to the data on political spending. The tipsheet also explains how to create data on legislative gifts, and make it meaningful.
Tags: CAR; legislators; donations; ethics
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Deja's View: In a Poor Baby's Fight to Survive, a Parable of a Medicaid HMO, Beyond the Statistics, A Druggist Confronts the Reality of Robbery
Wall Street Journal editor Ken Wells distributed these stories which show excellent reporting matched with equally excellent writing.
Tags: writing; HMO; infant mortality; workplace murders
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Investigative Matching
This handout explains how to cross databases to uncover truths in the health care industry. Gebeloff describes a project he was involved in that looked into New Jersey's home healthcare industry and used matching to get helpful information.
Tags: health care; matching; databases; health