How IRE training is building newsroom leaders

Journalists come to IRE conferences to sharpen their data analysis and investigative reporting skills, getting training on how to ask the toughest questions and pursue stories relentlessly.

That creates a great reporter in the field but often poses a dilemma for their editors and executive producers. How do you manage someone who’s trained to challenge authority?

Train the manager.

In 2022, IRE launched a new initiative to focus on investigative management, from story reviews and legal guidance to difficult conversations and safety concerns. We also sought to supercharge a community of support that continues to thrive today.

Our next management training will be at the IRE Conference, June 20-23, at the Anaheim Marriott in California. It’s an updated Master Class featuring a new segment on navigating union shops as well as other front-burner topics. The session includes instructors who are tops in their fields including Emma Carew Grovum of the Marshall Project, Cindy Galli of ABC News, Josh Hinkle of KXAN-TV, Gonzalo Magana of ABC10 Sacramento and Mc Nelly Torres of the Center for Public Integrity.

“Managing investigators is different than managing other groups, and that means managing not as a one-size-fits-all approach but managing people individually,” said Cody Lillich, a senior investigative producer at Arizona’s Family in Phoenix, who attended the Master Class at IRE23 in Orlando. “I would also say this group has helped to continue the conversation — I know if I have a management question, there's a group I can turn to for advice.”

So far, more than 180 managers and aspiring managers have trained at IRE online and in-person through these investigative management courses and associated webinars, creating a shared contact network of like-minded professionals with unique responsibilities.

The first “Managing Investigators” Master Class in 2022 was online, and it focused on pervasive management challenges of that specific leadership role. Hinkle and Torres joined Jodie Fleischer of Cox Media Group and Jennifer Forsyth of the Wall Street Journal to guide the class through more than three hours of discussion, advice and more.

“I love that I always learn something new from those attending while we open this space and try to teach this class,” Torres said.

It soon became an in-person course at both NICAR and IRE conferences, adding more top instructors to the lineup — including Carew Grovum, Nicole Vap of the CBS Innovation Lab and Jamie Grey of Gray’s InvestigateTV.

Outside of conferences, IRE has hosted webinars to make management training accessible to all our members. The latest webinars taught editors how to protect their teams from threats and bring more "people" skills to the newsroom. The online training is the work of a board subcommittee comprised of Grey, Vap and Kat Stafford of Reuters. It’s a subcommittee of IRE’s Member Services Committee, chaired by Hinkle.

If you’re a current (or aspiring) investigative manager, your colleagues want you to join IRE's next management training in June. Sign up for this Master Class now while spots are still available.

_{IRE24 will take place June 20-23 in Anaheim, California. Learn more about the conference here.}