If you fill out the "Forgot Password" form but don't get an email to reset your password within 5-10 minutes, please email logistics@ire.org for assistance.
Ten newsrooms have been chosen to receive custom watchdog training in the coming year through IRE’s Total Newsroom Training program.
TNT provides two days of intensive, in-house training for small and medium-sized newsrooms dedicated to watchdog journalism. This is the seventh year IRE has offered the free program, which is supported through a grant.
TNT newsroom training is customized and includes two days of sessions ranging from public records battles to hands-on data analysis.
The newsrooms were chosen from more than 35 applications this year.
“Small and medium newsrooms can face challenges in producing watchdog stories with a real bite,” IRE Executive Director Doug Haddix said. “We’re thrilled that 10 more newsrooms across the country will receive TNT training to sharpen their investigative skills. Communities across America are hungry for stories that make a difference.”
Congratulations to the winning newsrooms:
IRE Editorial Director Sarah Hutchins has been promoted to training director, becoming the organization’s fifth full-time trainer. She will join the largest training team in IRE’s history, led by Senior Training Director Denise Malan.
Hutchins will lead efforts to expand the number of immersive data boot camps that IRE offers across the United States. She also will help shepherd the new IRE on Campus program, which will provide data training for journalism educators as well as focused investigative training at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic Serving Institutions.
“During her nearly six years on the IRE staff, Sarah has excelled at every project she’s managed,” IRE Executive Director Doug Haddix said. “She started the IRE Radio podcast, developed and built the NICAR-Learn online training service and led a major redesign of The IRE Journal magazine. She also has grown IRE’s audiences through social media and e-newsletters.”
For the past two years, she also has planned and led watchdog workshops, taught hands-on data skills during boot camps, and helped plan the national NICAR and IRE conferences.
In May, Hutchins earned her master’s degree in data science and analytics from the University of Missouri. Prior to joining IRE in January 2014, Hutchins worked as a reporter at The Virginian-Pilot newspaper. She earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Indiana University.
"Attending IRE's CAR Boot Camp in 2014 changed the way I think about data," Hutchins said. "Learning these skills altered the course of my career. I'm excited to grow these programs and make data journalism accessible to journalists, educators and students. The result will be better stories in communities across the county."
IRE is conducting a national search for a new Editorial Director, who will be based at the organization’s headquarters at the University of Missouri. Full details are online, with an application deadline of this Wednesday (December 4).
Want to get more involved with IRE but aren’t sure how? Consider volunteering your time as an IRE Awards screener.
As a screener, you'll be part of a team of journalists looking for the best investigative reporting in a single category, which means that you may have to read, listen to, or watch a couple dozen entries. It’s a bit of a time commitment, but most screeners find the process rewarding. The majority of the work is done in January and early February.
Being a screener does not disqualify you from entering the awards. If you have questions, feel free to contact Jennifer LaFleur, the contest committee chair for the IRE Board of Directors (jlafleur@irworkshop.org), or Lauren Grandestaff, IRE’s awards coordinator (lauren@ire.org).
If you’re ready to toss your hat in the ring, please fill out this short form by December 13. We’ll be in touch soon!
IRE wants your ideas for the upcoming IRE Conference in Metro D.C. next June. We’re also starting an email list so you can keep up with news about the conference.
Use this form to share ideas, suggestions and other comments to help us plan the best possible #IRE20 conference. No suggestion is too big or too small. The form will be open through Jan. 12.
Here are a few ways you can use this form:
Have several ideas? Great! Fill out the form as many times as you’d like. And help us spread the word by sharing this form with friends and colleagues. (Here’s a sharable bitlink: bit.ly/ire20pitch)
Keep in mind that IRE retains editorial control over the content of its conferences. If we use your idea, our team will take care of reaching out to speakers and finalizing details. Here are some other tips we put together to help you make the best pitch and understand our process.
Make sure to get your ideas in by Jan. 12. Please direct questions to conference@ire.org.
Sign up here for a special 2020 IRE Conference email list to receive details as we announce them. We’ll let you know any time we make a major announcement, update you on the planning process and remind you of key dates/deadlines surrounding the conference.
IRE is seeking a journalist to work full time as Editorial Director at its headquarters at the University of Missouri.
IRE’s current Editorial Director, Sarah Hutchins, is being promoted to be a full-time trainer.
The Editorial Director oversees all IRE content and serves as its voice on social media. This is a great opportunity for a journalist who wants to help bolster investigative journalism around the world. The content produced by IRE is used by thousands of professionals and students. You’ll also have the opportunity to support the next generation of journalists by working with students at the Missouri School of Journalism.
The position, which reports to the Executive Director, is responsible for the following areas:
Publications: The quarterly IRE Journal magazine, the IRE Radio Podcast, and e-newsletters including Quick Hits and I-Team Toolkit. The Director plans content, writes and edits copy, oversees publication budgets, works with contractors and manages distribution platforms.
Social media and marketing: The Editorial Director manages IRE’s social media accounts, writes posts, designs social graphics and manages social media marketing campaigns.
Website: Writes blog posts; builds and updates webpages; manages collection of resources including stories, tipsheets, books and audio; and ensures IRE’s brand and identity remain consistent across all digital channels.
Management: The Editorial Director hires and manages 3-5 part-time journalism students from the Missouri School of Journalism, a part-time communications assistant and contractors.
Desired Skills and Abilities:
Location: Columbia, Missouri.
Hours: Full time, with the ability to travel to IRE’s two annual national conferences.
Pay & benefits: $45,000-$55,000, depending on experience. IRE staff members are employees of the University of Missouri, with attractive health insurance, tuition assistance, retirement and other benefits.
How to apply: All candidates must apply through the University of Missouri job site. Click here for the job description and a link to apply. If you have not applied for a job with the University of Missouri, you will be prompted to create a profile in order to submit your application. Please have your resume and cover letter prepared as PDF files to upload. The university application process is time-consuming, so please give yourself enough time to meet the deadline.
The University of Missouri is an equal access, equal opportunity, affirmative action employer that is fully committed to achieving a diverse faculty and staff. Equal Opportunity is and shall be provided for all employees and applicants for employment on the basis of their demonstrated ability and competence without unlawful discrimination on the basis of their race, color, national origin, ancestry, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, genetic information, disability, or protected veteran status.
If you have questions, please contact IRE Executive Director Doug Haddix: doug@ire.org or 573-882-1984.
On this bonus episode, we’re sharing audio from the 2016 IRE Conference. In a session on narrative storytelling, reporters T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong explain how they wrote their Pulitzer-winning investigation, “An Unbelievable Story of Rape”. Their reporting is the basis of a new Netflix limited series called “Unbelievable”.
You can find the podcast on Soundcloud, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play. If you have a story you think we should feature on the show, drop us a note at web@ire.org. We’d love to hear from you.
Looking for links to the stories and resources we discussed on this week's podcast? We've collected them for you.
Cloud Line (Blue Dot Sessions) / CC BY-NC 4.0
The Kennicott (Blue Dot Sessions) / CC BY-NC 4.0
Copley Beat (Blue Dot Sessions) / CC BY-NC 4.0
So Go We (Blue Dot Sessions) / CC BY-NC 4.0
Building the Sled (Blue Dot Sessions) / CC BY-NC 4.0
Kelly Kenoyer reported this episode. IRE Editorial Director Sarah Hutchins edits the podcast. We are recorded in the studios of KBIA at the University of Missouri.
Projects investigating an insular religious community, Columbia River tribe nations, and the Palm Beach prostitution raid have been awarded IRE Freelance Fellowships.
The recipients of the 2019 competition are:
The generosity of an anonymous donor has allowed IRE to award fellowships for the last 12 years. The fellowships give independent journalists a financial boost to pursue investigative work.
If you’d like to donate to the Freelance Fellowship fund, click here to make a donation. Please designate "Freelance Fellowship” in the form.
IRE would like to highlight the work of 2017 IRE Freelance Fellowship recipient, Anna Cavell.
"The fellowship I was awarded in 2017 became a documentary for Al Jazeera, which (recently) won an Emmy in New York in the category of outstanding investigation in a news magazine,” she said. Cavell investigated how the demand in U.S. families seeking to adopt from Uganda has paved the way for exploitation and fraud.
IRE Freelance Fellowships are for journalists who make their living primarily as freelance/independent journalists. Applications are scrutinized by experienced freelance journalists. Proposals are judged in part on the breadth, significance and potential impact of the investigative project. At the request of the donor, proposals dealing with whistleblowers, business ethics and/or privacy issues will receive priority; projects involving other topics will be given serious consideration by the committee as well. The freelance projects are to be published or aired primarily in U.S. outlets.
Are you making the most of your IRE membership benefits? Here's a recap of our current partnerships, how you can benefit and instructions on getting access to premium tools.
FOIAengine : Free 1-Year Subscription for IRE Professional members
(This is limited to members with a professional membership.)
FOIAengine, a tool created by PoliScio Analytics co-founders Randy Miller, an attorney, and John Jenkins, a journalist, searches requests made through the federal Freedom of Information Act nationwide. It helps replace the public record request database previously available at FOIAonline.gov, until the federal government shut it down in October 2023.
Like the government’s database, FOIAengine provides data about the requests themselves not the files, in essence creating a FOIA log to help users see what has already been requested. The new tool has more robust functionality and searching capabilities, and standardizes data from different agencies to make it easier to work with. You can search and filter records by agency, requester's organization or type (news media, law firm, financial institution, etc.), requester’s name, date or text of the request. You can also copy or export 100 records at a time to analyze in other tools, including Microsoft Excel. FOIAengine provides one-click links to LinkedIn (for researching requester backgrounds) and real-time stock-market data (for publicly traded companies)
What does this mean to you? As an IRE professional member, you can receive a free 1-year subscription to access FOIAengine, a searchable database with more than 230,000 FOIA record requests from 2021 to the present. It is updated in as close to real time as availability allows. This special subscription is the only way an individual can access the database. IRE is the only media association authorized to access this resource.
To request a subscription: Current IRE members with a professional membership should email amy@ire.org. If you’re not a current IRE member, you can join here. If you need to renew, sign into your IRE account and click "Members Dashboard" located in the upper right corner of the page.
Note: If you have questions about FOIAengine, please contact David Meyers, david@poliscio.com.
Cometdocs is retiring its API and moving to Xodo. IRE is working with Xodo and will provide more information when we have it.
You have probably encountered the problem of the PDF; the data and information are there, but locked in the PDF leaving you unable to filter, sort and work with the data in other ways. Cometdocs was an online file conversion and storage tool to help with PDF and other types of files.
Tableau Desktop and Tableau Prep Builder: Free license for IRE members
If you’ve ever analyzed public data, you know the pain of digging into the data only to find that it’s poorly structured, full of inaccuracies or just plain incomplete. You’re stuck fixing the data in Excel or writing complex calculations before you can answer a simple question.Tableau Prep Builder is designed to reduce the struggle of common yet complex tasks — such as joins, unions, pivots and aggregations — with a drag-and-drop visual experience. No scripting required. Once your data is prepped, connect to your data in Tableau Desktop to quickly find insights and answer questions. Read more about Tableau.
What does this mean to you? As an IRE member, you can receive a free license that includes both Tableau Prep Builder and Tableau Desktop.
To request a license: Current IRE members should email amy@ire.org. If you’re not a current IRE member, you can join or renew here. If you need to renew, you will need to sign into your IRE account and click "Members Dashboard" located in the upper right corner of the page. Note: If you have questions about Tableau, please contact public@tableau.com.
SmartProcure/GovSpend: Discounted subscription for IRE members
Receive a discounted subscription to the largest government purchasing database. The database contains more than 1.08 billion purchase orders from more than 21,000 local, state and federal government agencies in the U.S. SmartProcure is now GovSpend. Read more about GovSpend.
What does this mean to you: As an IRE member, you can receive a SmartProcure/GovSpend subscription for $1,500 annually (an 86 percent discount from their subscription rate of $11,000 per year). Your subscription will give you “SmartSearch” access to SmartProcure/GovSpend. This includes unlimited searches in SmartProcure/GovSpend’s database, government and vendor profiles and key contacts, email alerts for saved search updates and more.
To get a subscription: Current IRE members should email smartprocure@ire.org. If you’re not a current IRE member, you can join or renew here. If you need to renew, you will need to sign into your IRE account and click "Members Dashboard" located in the upper right corner of the page.
Note: If you have questions about SmartProcure/GovSpend, please contact mdigeronimo@govspend.com.
PacerMonitor: Discounted subscription for IRE members
A legal research tool created to help people follow federal court cases, PacerMonitor has expanded from its initial focus on bankruptcy and now includes all federal courts, making it a useful tool for many reporters and editors. It has a database of more than 140 million PACER documents. PacerMonitor also allows users to set new case filing and docket alerts to stay on top of cases proactively. Read more about PacerMonitor.
What does this mean to you: As an IRE member, you receive a 50% discount which is $24.50/mo for the Plus plan and $49.50 for the Professional plan, which includes full database access, advanced searching capabilities and the ability to set up alerts.
To request a subscription: First, requesters need their own PACER credentials to get started (to set up those credentials, go here). Current IRE members should email amy@ire.org. If you’re not a current IRE member, you can join or renew here. If you need to renew, you will need to sign into your IRE account and click "Members Dashboard" located in the upper right corner of the page.
Note: If you have questions about PacerMonitor, please contact christopher@pacermonitor.com.
It's once again time to enter the Philip Meyer Journalism Award contest. Entries are now being accepted online, through Nov. 17.
Established in 2005, the award was created to honor Philip Meyer's pioneering efforts to utilize social science research methods to foster better journalism. The contest recognizes stories that incorporate survey research, probabilities, and other social science tools in creative ways. Three awards are given annually:
Not sure what to enter? Watch award-winning data journalists Jennifer LaFleur, David Donald (deceased) and Tom Hargrove discuss best practices for great data reporting and stories that previously won the Philip Meyer Awards. To learn more about the contest, go to the Philip Meyer Award FAQ page, or contact IRE's contest coordinator, Lauren Grandestaff at 573-882-6668 or lauren@ire.org.
The deadline for entries is November 17, 2019, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern.
Get your stories ready to enter the Philip Meyer Awards! We'll be accepting entries later this month and we can't wait to see what you enter.
To get a head start on the entry process, go ahead and renew your membership, start filling out the required questionnaire, and get your links and/or files ready to submit. When the contest opens, all you'll have to do is complete our new form, attach your files and pay the $75 entry fee.
Three awards are given annually — a first, second and third place — to recognize the best work using techniques that are part of precision journalism, computer-assisted reporting and social science research. The awards are: $500 for first, $300 for second, and $200 for third.
The deadline to enter is November 17, 11:59 p.m. EST.
Awards will be presented at the 2020 CAR Conference in New Orleans on March 6, 2020.
For more information about the Philip Meyer Journalism Awards, check out the FAQ or contact Lauren Grandestaff at lauren@ire.org or 573-882-6668.
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