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 "mean" ...
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Infect the CMS
We web developers strive for rugged independence. The luckiest of us have total control over our web stacks and the design of our projects, unlike those poor sods forced to labor within the Content Management System (CMS). Therein lies the problem; being apart means being invisible unless you spread your content to the CMS and beyond. This tipsheet will discuss some strategies and experiences for getting your app content to find readers where they are. http://harrisj.github.io/infect-the-cms/
Tags: app; CMS; content management system
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Forming and Operating a Tax-Exempt Journalism Organization
Hermes extensively lays out what it means to be a tax-exempt journalism organization and the history behind it and provides legal resources for anyone interested in starting their own nonprofit center.
Tags: nonprofits; tax-exempt; 990; 501(c)(3)
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IRE Member Information
So you're an IRE member? What does it all mean? This tipsheet provides information about the perks of IRE membership such as networking, fellowships and scholarships, and much more.
Tags: IRE Membership
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Understanding error messages in Access
When working with Access, actually reading the errors you get can help you figure out what\'s wrong. Dowdell put together a handout on the errors and what they mean.
Tags: microsoft; access; error messages
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Math for Journalists: Stats you need to know
Donald's presentation discusses why the use of statistics is important for journalists, and how stats enable the reporter to say the most with the data they're using. The tipsheet talks you through some of the lingo you need to know when dealing with stats, and provide a list of helpful resources.
Tags: stats; regression; dependent variables; independent variables; data; mean; median; range; rank
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Statistics for stories
Donald and LaFleur provide tips on how to analyze, organize and understand all things data-related in order to find statistics within the information. They give detailed explanations of types of data that reporters will encounter, and explain how to work with and break-down all of the different parts.
Tags: statistics; data; investigative reporting; statistical analysis; Gini coefficient; mean; median; range; rank; regression; continuous data; categorical data
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Web Scraping
Heath details web scraping. "'Scraping' means extracting data from websites. Thing about any site that lets you search a data set. How much better would it be if you could get the whole thing?" Heath explores the benefits and reasons for scraping, and what tools you'll need to accomplish the task.
Tags: web scraping; data set; database; excel; scripting; Perl; PHP; Ruby; VB; C#; Open Kapow; Yahoo Pipes
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Time Crunch: How to Make 2:30 Stories Work
Sherman discusses how to make the most out of a short time slot for your broadcast investigation. She includes advice about how to whittle your story down to the bare essentials and how to deliver a story through alternative means (like the website) that include more information. The tipsheet also includes advice on the issue from many other investigative broadcast journalists.
Tags: broadcast reporting; story telling; writing
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Statistics For the Newsroom
This comprehensive guide to incorporating statistics into a story is a good refresher for seasoned reporters and a great introduction to CAR newbies. LaFleur covers different types of data, different forms of analysis (mean, median, regression, rank, correlation, etc), ideas for beat reporters, and instructions for calculating indexes.
Tags: statistics; beat reporting; data analysis; math
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Don't Know Much About Algebra: Math in the Newsroom
This PowerPoint presentation provides a plan on how to use math and understand statistics, and disseminate these numbers in an understandable way in stories. Questions such as mean vs. median are used to illustrate the importance of knowing how to incorporate numbers, and which statistics to use in reporting.