Here's your NICAR25 Lightning Talks lineup

The results are in! Here's the lineup for Lightning Talks at the 2025 NICAR Conference in Minneapolis next week, in speaking order:

1. Lessons from heraldry: What one of oldest forms of data storytelling can teach us | Emilia Ruzicka, University of Virginia
This quick talk will use the ancient art of making coats of arms as a model for some data visualization and data storytelling best practices. Not only will you learn some tips and tricks for your reporting, but you’ll also design your very own coat of arms — in just five minutes!

2. How to truly diversify your sources | Karen K. Ho, ARTnews
Studies of news coverage from around the world have consistently found more than 70% of people seen, quoted and heard in the news are men, while women make up less than 30%. This talk will provide clear, practical and proven tips on how to find, interview and retain many more women, visible minorities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, and/or non-Americans as sources in any beat.

3. Hot dish versus casserole: An evidence-based approach | Taylor Thomas, Politico
Growing up in the North Star State as the daughter of non-Minnesotans (still Midwesterners who think pepper is spicy), hot dish was an entirely new concept to me, as was the joke that you're not a Minnesotan til you can tell the difference between hot dish and casserole. I have scanned Minnesota-compiled church and community cookbooks from 1940-80 for relevant recipes, and I'll run an analysis to determine whether there's actually a difference between the two types of recipe. I'll also reach out to Gov. Walz and other notable Minnesotans to ask for their take.

4. Beyond Punxsutawney: Exploring and using NOAA weather data in your backyard | Emily Featherston, InvestigateTV
From determining the prognostication proficiency of a particularly-famous groundhog to looking at how climate change has affected weather patterns in specific communities, NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information provides a hyper-local history of observed weather data. Hear tips on searching for useful (and complete) data, and see how our team used it to calculate the accuracy of different animals' predictions of an early spring or long winter.

5. A Song of Ice and FOIA: How to fight records denials, as explained by Game of Thrones memes | Lucia Walinchus, NBC Universal
Using examples from real-life cases, tips and tricks to get around lackluster records responses. Illustrated with memes from the hit series.

6. Uncovering the Past: Lessons learned when investigating files about Brazil’s elite and historical slavery | Bianca Muniz, Agência Pública de Jornalismo Investigativo
How do you investigate a fact when the evidence is centuries old—or hidden behind bureaucracy, private contracts, and barely legible manuscripts? Projeto Escravizadores is an investigation into how Brazil’s elite is linked to historical slavery, using fragmented census rolls, probate inventories, and 19th-century slave registries. In five minutes, I’ll share strategies for structuring messy historical and genealogical datasets, navigating archival barriers, and making sense of old records.

7. How to save $3,000 in public record fees | Sharon Lurye, Associated Press
In this lightning talk, I'll discuss tips and tricks for negotiating lower fees for public records requests. I'll describe times when I've successfully negotiated fees down from as much as $3,000 to only $30 -- and even zero.

8. The geographies you hate to have to know | Mike Stucka, independent journalist
Inside Virginia's Fairfax County is a county-like place called Fairfax that's not part of Fairfax the county, while an island of Fairfax County survives inside Fairfax the county-like place. What stupid geographies do you need to know to have a working knowledge as a journalist, all while furthering your loathing of Virginia?

9. Second child syndrome: A meta analysis | Daniel Wolfe, The Washington Post
I can tell you when my firstborn daughter was fed milk or formula down to the hour, minute, second and that's because I built a tracker and custom display to tell us when to feed her next. Our second kid? We're shooting off text messages to each other to remember the faintest of details. This is a look at the data we collected on our first kid and what it says about how our parenting's changed now that we have two.

10. Here are five things that playing basketball taught me about working on data projects | Chris Keller, Associated Press
Think knocking down jumpers and analyzing data in a spreadsheet aren't similar? Think again. I'll share five things that I learned from playing basketball that have become indispensable to my work as a data reporter.

Lightning Talks, a series of 5-minute talks selected by the community, has become one of the most popular sessions at the NICAR Conference. This year, you can attend the big event on Friday, March 7, from 5 - 6:15 p.m. in the Grand Portage Ballroom (on the 4th floor of the conference hotel)