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 "used cars" ...
-
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
-
Connecting the dots with NodeXL
NodeXL is an add-in for Excel 2007 and 2010 that allows you to do network analysis (aka social network analysis) in a familiar spreadsheet environment. You'll learn how to use the software by turning data from 2007 on voting patterns in the US Senate into an informative graphic revealing the chamber's underlying dynamics - and highlighting the few senators who broke the partisan mold.
Tags: None
-
Cracking Codes
Learn about datasets that can help localize health stories, including pharmaceutical company spending on doctors, nursing home violations and hospital quality, among others. We will dive into Medicare data and data that local and state reporters can use.
Tags: health data; Medicaid; nursing homes; drugs
-
Making Health Data Sexy
Learn about datasets that can help localize health stories, including pharmaceutical company spending on doctors, nursing home violations and hospital quality, among others. We will dive into Medicare data and data that local and state reporters can use.
Tags: Medicare data; nursing home; hospital; pharmaceuticals
-
Git and Github: Learning to commit to version control
You need version control, and git is the answer. This class will introduce basic git commands and walk you through using the social coding site Github to store and organize your projects. It's ideal for anyone working on web development, scraping and scripting to gather or clean data. You should set up an account on Github before the class, and it's recommended, but not compulsory, that you be comfortable navigating the command line.
-
Developing reusable visualization components using D3 and Backbone
This session will step through a process for creating components for standards-based Web content, focusing in particular on the creation of common building blocks for data visualization in JavaScript. D3 is an increasingly popular choice for developing visual content and we will look at how items ranging from simple bar charts to custom graphics can be packaged up for easy reuse. Backbone is a widely used toolkit for creating browser-based applications and we will examine how its models and views can play a role in the creation of components. Consideration will be given to combination, customization and the power of reuse versus the perils of over-generalization. https://github.com/rflow/nicar-13-examples/blob/master/slides.key
Tags: data visualization; Java Script; D3; backbone
-
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
-
The one-query story: Quick hits for your newsroom
Amaze your editors and wow your readers with these quick-hit data story ideas. Learn techniques on how to look for the short-form watchdog and how to juggle it all. Afflict the comfortable by fact-checking their statements, find expert sources and use spreadsheets to inform your next project.
Tags: spreadsheets; query; data; car
-
Inside baseball: What data journalism can learn from sports
This panel will identify areas for data journalism exploration by examining the current state-of-the-art baseball data analysis. Sports are the original form of data journalism -- box scores predate open government movements by about a century. And Joseph Adler's "Baseball Hacks" trained newbie Web CAR reporters how to scrape and analyze data sets using Perl and MySQL. Finally, sports analytics are a leading indicator for other kinds of analysis. Sensors, economic analysis, leverage are all de rigeur in baseball but still up-and-coming in data journalism. We'll take the concepts being used to analyze baseball, football, soccer and apply them to standard data journalism chores.
-
Data-Driven Beats
How can the tools and techniques used in data journalism be applied to the day-to-day demands of beat reporting? What challenges do newsrooms face reorganizing and adding structure to beats? We'll share our experiences building sites like Homicide Watch DC and PolitiFact, and look at examples of other projects that add structure and data to daily beat reporting. http://eyeseast.github.io/data-beats/
Tags: None