IRE 2024 schedule

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A speed round of best ideas anyone can do in their markets. Jot these down and go do them now!

Speakers

Jenna Bourne, 10 Tampa Bay (WTSP-TV)

Jenna is an investigative reporter at 10 Tampa Bay (WTSP-TV), a TEGNA-owned and CBS-affiliated station. She previously worked at WJAX/WFOX in Jacksonville, FL; WSPA in Greenville, SC; and WKBT in La Crosse, WI.

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Katie Wilcox, KPNX

Tracee Wilkins, WRC-TV, Washington, D.C.

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Your investigation just aired on TV, but you have so much more of the story to tell! From multi-part TV stories, to podcasts, to longform and streaming specials, these creative storytellers will demonstrate ways to maximize your content.

Speakers

Jeremy Finley, WSMV-TV

Jeremy Finley's heroes are investigative reporters, so he hopes to meet you. He's a three-time IRE award winner and the chief investigative reporter at WSMV-TV. As an internationally published novelist, his books have been featured in People Magazine, the NY Post, and NPR. He's also the co-host of the literary public affairs show, A WORD ON WORDS, on Nashville Public Television. He lives with his wife, daughters, terrible dog and the James Bond of cats in Nashville, TN.

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Wendy Halloran, KUTV

Tomas Navia, ABC News

Bigad Shaban, NBC Bay Area

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Dozens of newsrooms are giving up horse-race coverage in favor of investigating the issues — problems and solutions — that matter most to the community. By reporting on politicians' proposals and campaign promises on these key issues, they are holding politicians accountable. They're also making campaign coverage less toxic and polarizing, and more helpful to voters.

This panel will feature journalists who have transformed their newsroom's coverage, and tips for newsrooms who want to get away from the horse-race.

Speakers

Brianna Lee, Southern California Public Radio

Tina Rosenburg, Solutions Journalism Network

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Ernest Kung, The Associated Press

David Lesher, CalMatters

Julie Watts, CBS News California Investigates

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The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) specifically guarantees reporters access to many records from federal agencies. While FOIA comes with a presumption of openness, access is not guaranteed: the law permits agencies to hold records if they fall within an “exemption” to FOIA. And in some cases, an agency may still delay responding.

Learn how to write a public records request and how to make the most of them.

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Suzy Khimm, NBC News

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While there is great reportage on climate change, there remains a dearth of investigative reporting on this issue. Like almost all issues investigative reporters are looking into, there are powerful individuals and organizations driving climate change. So, where do you start? How do you go about an investigation into climate-related issues? And what separates an investigation from reportage around climate change?

Speakers

Lauren Etter, Bloomberg News

Lauren Etter is an investigative reporter and editor at Bloomberg News. She was a lead editor on the 2024 Pulitzer finalist series “Water Grab,” which documented how corporate water profiteers “willfully exacerbate the effects of climate change at the expense of less powerful communities.” Previously a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal, Etter holds master’s degrees in journalism and in law from Northwestern University.

Miranda Green, Floodlight

Miranda is the LA-based Director of Investigations at Floodlight, where she reports on climate-focused projects including the intersection of dark money, the fossil fuel industrial complex and the manipulation of news to spread misinformation. A two-part series she co-reported with NPR was chosen as a finalist for the 2023 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and won the Los Angeles Press Club’s award on misinformation.

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Ben Stockton, Centre for Climate Reporting

Amy Westervelt, Drilled

Amy Westervelt is an award-winning investigative climate reporter whose work has been published by The Guardian, The Intercept, The Washington Post, and many more. Today, she runs Drilled, a global investigative newsroom publishing climate accountability stories in print and audio. In 2023, Amy was named a Covering Climate Now Journalist of the Year. Her work has previously received Murrow, ONA, SEJ, and Rachel Carson awards, as well as two Peabody nominations.

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This panel will showcase how to use some of the most popular no-code tech tools to organize large investigative projects. We'll cover how to automate FOIA tracking, facilitate collaborative projects, and create databases for interview notes and fact checking.

Speakers

Matt Dempsey, Spotlight PA

Madison Hopkins, Better Government Association

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Broadcast audiences may be shrinking, but our panel of innovators deliver 10 tips to add multiplatform elements to your investigations and find audiences in new places - without burning yourself out. You'll leave with ideas on how to reach new viewers - on YouTube, on social media, OTT, and other platforms you may have never even considered - to get better ROI from your hard work and to amplify your impact.

Speakers

Levi Ismail, NewsChannel 5

Levi Ismail is an award-winning investigative reporter for the prestigious NewsChannel 5 Investigative Unit in Nashville, Tennessee. Most of Levi’s 10+ year career involved shooting, writing and editing his own stories, but now he applies those same skills to sharing his investigations across multiple platforms. Ask Levi about “vertical video storytelling,” and don’t forget to catch more of his reporting on-air and on the TikTok channel Nashville News.

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Ashlyn Lipori-Russie, Freelance

Ashlyn is an Emmy-nominated journalist with a diverse background in broadcast and digital news. She started her career with the Investigative Unit at NBC Bay Area before becoming a producer at KGTV. Ashlyn then worked as content manager at inewsource, a nonprofit investigative newsroom in San Diego, where she took the lead on audience engagement and innovation. Most recently, she has launched her own venture called Ask Ashlyn, working to combat news avoidance.

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Noah Pransky, Independent journalist

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Spencer Custodio, Voice of OC

Michael Hitzik, Los Angeles Times

Arlene Martinez, Good Jobs First

Norberto Santana, Voice of OC

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Brandi Kellam, ProPublica and the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO

Cheryl W. Thompson, NPR

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Investigative journalism is increasingly collaborative – across newsrooms and across borders. But are we developing models of collaboration that recreate -- rather than challenge – historic power imbalances between journalists in the Global South and Global North?

International journalism has a long history of extractive practices, from exploiting “fixers” to failing to credit local outlets. But even the most well-intentioned global collaborations can fall into some of the same patterns.

We will convene a frank, off-the-record discussion between editors and project managers about equity and inclusion in cross-border investigations. Facilitated by Lighthouse Reports editors working on collaborations in Mexico, Afghanistan and Syria, we will discuss practical steps the industry can take to create more inclusive cross-border collaborations.

Speakers

Mohammad Fahim Abed, Lighthouse Reports

Fahim Abed is a investigations editor with Lighthouse Reports and 2023 Nieman fellow at Harvard. He was a reporter for The New York Times in Afghanistan until the Taliban takeover of the country in August 2021.

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Charlotte Alfred, Lighthouse Reports

Charlotte is senior editor at investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports, developing cross-border projects that combine OSINT, data journalism and money trails tools. She focuses on investigations in countries affected by conflict, in partnership with local and exiled journalists. Previously based in the Middle East, she has worked in news, features and documentary, reporting on migration, misinformation and conflict.

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Melissa del Bosque, Lighthouse Reports

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Ever wondered what it takes to make a limited-run podcast, the kind that unfurls an investigation over episodes, introduces unforgettable characters and asks big questions? We'll give you a high-level view of how to turn great reporting into a great audio narrative.

Speaker

Kristin Nelson, Boston Globe

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Prisons and jails are difficult institutions to crack. Guards maintain a blue wall of silence. Unlike police, citizen cell phones can't capture official misbehavior. And many people don't care about the incarcerated. Hear from panelists about how they get behind the walls to tell the stories of what goes on in prisons and jails.

Speakers

Keri Blakinger, Los Angeles Times

Keri Blakinger is a Los Angeles Times reporter covering the Sheriff's Department and county jails. Previously, she covered prisons for The Marshall Project and criminal justice for the Houston Chronicle. She is a two-time Pulitzer finalist and the author of Corrections in Ink.

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Jan Ransom, The New York Times

Jan Ransom is an investigative reporter for The New York Times focusing on criminal justice issues, law enforcement and incarceration in New York. The Newswomen's Club of New York named her “Journalist of the Year” for their 2022 Front Page Awards for her coverage of the crisis at Rikers Island, one of America's most notorious jail complexes.

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Mike Sisak, The Associated Press

Christie Thompson, The Marshall Project

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When a patient dies in alarming circumstances or lifesaving medicines become potentially lethal, how can you develop sources and follow the paper trail to determine who is responsible?

Reporters who have dug into the vital parts of the healthcare industry – from the global pharmaceutical supply chain to defective medical device manufacturers to healthcare providers serving the most vulnerable – will lay out sources, documents and data that you can use in your own investigations.

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Kendall Taggart, Bloomberg News

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Tips and tools to help journalists tap emerging new technologies in AI to monitor, summarize, and get alerts on key topics in their community, using low-cost and free tools.

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Disinformation and online abuse are significant threats for investigative journalists, editors, and their work, and are expected to increase exponentially in the lead up to the elections. This session will explore how new technologies, including generative AI, can disrupt traditional reporting and fuel online abuse, and how these disruptions can, in turn, threaten progress on diversifying the journalism industry. Featuring an investigative journalist and producer, and digital safety and disinformation experts, this session will offer journalists and editors the opportunity to exchange best practices and practical tools on defending against online abuse and disinformation campaigns.

Speaker

Jeje Mohamed, PEN America

Jeje Mohamed is the senior manager, digital safety and free expression at PEN America. She has over a decade of experience working on journalism, human rights issues, and safety and security in the Middle East and internationally. She develops identity-centric and trauma-informed physical, digital, and psychological safety and security training for journalists and media organizations. She is on the advisory board and newsroom lead for Coalition Against Online Violence.

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Speakers

Matt Goldberg, CBS News

Jatara McGee, Hearst Television

Walter Smith Randolph, CBS News New York

Walter Smith Randolph is a national award-winning investigative journalist. He's currently the Executive Producer of Investigations at CBS News New York. He's also an adjunct assistant professor the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and he serves as Vice President-Broadcast of the National Association of Black Journalists. Walter is a past member of IRE's Contest Committee.

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This session is sponsored by Bloomberg. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

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Arlene Martinez, Good Jobs First

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Speakers

Maryam Jameel, ProPublica

Maryam Jameel is an engagement reporter at ProPublica based in Washington DC. She focuses on community-sourced investigations mainly tied to workers' rights issues.

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Wendy Selene Pérez, Independent Journalist

Wendy Selene Pérez is a journalist with a two-decade career spanning various media outlets in Mexico, Argentina, and the US. Her work focuses on social justice, government accountability, and immigration. Pérez's articles have been featured in The Texas Tribune, EHN, El País, Gatopardo, Proceso, and Al Día/Dallas Morning News. She has been honored with the National Journalism Awards in Mexico, Walter Reuter German Journalism Award, and Breach-Valdez Human Rights Award.

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Speakers

CD Davidson-Hiers, EWA

Matt Drange, Business Insider

Matt Drange is a reporter at Business Insider, previously with The Information, FORBES magazine and The Center for Investigative Reporting. He's spent the past two years investigating educator sexual abuse in K-12 schools across America. In addition to IRE, Drange volunteers with SABEW's First Amendment Committee and SPJ NorCal’s Freedom of Information Committee. He graduated from Columbia University and teaches journalism at Cal Poly Humboldt and Laney College. 

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Jewel Jackson, Better Government Association

Marina Villeneuve, Salon

Marina Villeneuve is an investigative journalist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2023, she graduated from Columbia University's Lede Program in data journalism and was a USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism National Fellow for a broadcast series she led on sexual abuse in Massachusetts public schools. She worked for six years as a statehouse reporter for The Associated Press in Maine and New York.

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Hear from journalism educators who are using their classrooms as places where young reporters work with actual professionals to provide reporting and assistance with public service accountability projects. You'll learn about how these collaborations happened and why they mattered-- and how other reporters and newsrooms can collaborate with higher ed institutions.

Speakers

Amara Aguilar, USC Annenberg

Kathy Best, Howard Center for Investigative Journalism

Kathy Best is the inaugural director of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland. She previously was the executive editor of The Seattle Times, editor of the Missoulian in Missoula, MT, and a top editor at The Baltimore Sun, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Students in the Howard Center produce national investigations, often working with other universities or professional partners.

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Kathleen Johnston, Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism

Justin Pritchard, The Associated Press

Erin Siegel-McIntyre, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media

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Whether you’re writing a longform investigation or turning something shorter, in this panel you’ll learn tips for making your scripts sing.

Speakers

A.J. Lagoe, KARE11

Joce Sterman, InvestigateTV

Chris Vanderveen, KUSA-TV, Denver, CO

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In investigative journalism, Sarah Stillman (newly minted Pulitzer winner) and Ava Kofman are two of the finest writers around, able to pull readers into deeply reported, long-form pieces on critical but oh-so-gloomy subjects. In this session they'll talk shop, asking each other about their techniques and stories, which range from the draconian felony-murder doctrine and debtors' prisons to penile enlargement surgery (gone wrong) and turning hospice care into a hustle.

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Right-wing politicians are pushing trans issues to the fore — in campaign rhetoric, proposed bills and executive actions — as they try to mobilize their base. In the process, it’s become a story across a broad range of beats, from health to education to sports to public accommodations, and beyond. On this panel, editors experienced with trans coverage will discuss key issues to consider when covering the topic, traps to avoid, and stories that are being missed.

This session was planned in collaboration with TJA. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Gina Chua, Semafor

Gina Chua is Executive Editor at Semafor. She was previously Executive Editor at Reuters, Editor-in-Chief of the South China Morning Post and The Asian Wall Street Journal; a Deputy Managing Editor at The Wall Street Journal; a correspondent in Singapore, Manila and Hanoi; and a television and radio journalist in Singapore. She graduated with a BA in mathematics from the University of Chicago and a MS from Columbia University. Gina transitioned in late 2020.

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Ina Fried, Axios

Ina Fried is Chief Technology Correspondent at Axios and co-author of its daily AI+ newsletter. She also appears frequently on broadcast outlets including NPR and CNBC. Before Axios, Ina worked at Recode, AllThingsD and CNET. She is a member of the Transgender Journalists Association and NLGJA: The LGBT Journalists Association and is a member of the LGBT Journalists Hall of Fame.

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Noia Karr, Marketplace/APMG

Noia Karr's path to marketplace ran through NPR (as engineer, producer, reporter, and host), PBS (as producer and correspondent), and Columbia's j school (teacher). Noia is also a songwriter and musician with the collective box set authentic. They live in brooklyn with artist and educator Birgit Rathsmann.

Izz LaMagdeleine,

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Public charities, family foundations and other nonprofits – including those founded by professional athletes and celebrities – are required to submit financial filings to the IRS and state governments. An investigative sports journalist and charity watchdog expert team up to walk you through their in-depth, impactful and award-winning reporting on nonprofits. Learn where to obtain data and how much to trust it, how to navigate roadblocks, analyze charity financial reporting, identify red flags and follow leads.

Speakers

Laurie Styron, CharityWatch

Jason Wolf, The Arizona Republic

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The federal government receives the greatest share of media attention, but state governments, often overlooked, wield incredible power over its citizenry, making profound decisions that intimately affect disadvantaged youth, people living in poverty, individuals with disabilities and women's health care, for instance. Want to know how to move beyond insider Capitol reporting and horse-race election coverage to stories that compel change and resonate with the people and communities affected by state policy makers? This session will focus on how to find meaningful, people-first investigations on the state government beat.

Speakers

Beth Hundsdorfer, Capitol News Illinois

Beth has worked in journalism for 25 years. She has been the co-winner of two Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards, two John Jay College Awards, an IRE award, a National Headliners grand award, a Sigma Delta Chi award and George Polk Award. Beth has a daughter, Hannah and a son, Jameson.

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Meribah Knight, Nashville Public Radio

Meribah Knight is a senior reporter at Nashville Public Radio. She’s the host and creator of the Peabody Award-winning podcast The Promise and Serial’s recent podcast The Kids of Rutherford County. Knight has received numerous national awards for her reporting, including the George Foster Peabody and George Polk awards. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the Goldsmith Award, and twice for the National Magazine Award.

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Molly Parker, Southern Illinois University, Capitol News Illinois

Molly Parker is a Southern Illinois University assistant professor of journalism, a Capitol News Illinois reporter and ProPublica Local Reporting Network fellow. She has reported extensively on rural issues, affordable housing, child welfare and mental health. In 2022, Molly and CNI Reporter Beth Hundsdorfer won the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights print award for exposing patient abuse inside a state-run developmental center.

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Pre-publication review can be a crucial step for editors and reporters to protect themselves and their news organizations from legal liability. This session will provide an overview of common vetting principles to assess and reduce legal risk throughout the reporting process. Participants will come away with practical tips they can apply to their work and a better understanding of the resources available to help with legal vetting.

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Katie Townsend, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

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We’ll discuss the methodology behind Grist's project examining how land-grant universities got their land and money. Grist located and compiled data on more than 8 million acres of state trust lands associated with land-grant universities, established the parcels’ provenance, analyzed the revenue those lands produce for their associated institutions, and retrieved and categorized the income-generating activities in question, which include timber harvesting, oil and gas prospecting and leasing, mineral extraction, and agriculture. We’ll tell you about our research process, highlight the difficulties of tracing geospatial data and revenue streams across hundreds of years of history, and explain how to use our public dataset and get involved.

Speakers

Clayton Aldern, Grist

Clayton Aldern is a senior data reporter at Grist. His writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Economist, Scientific American, Logic, The Guardian and elsewhere. He holds a master's in neuroscience and a master's in public policy from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. His book "The Weight of Nature," on the effects of climate change on neurobiology, brain health, and cognition, is out now from Dutton.

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Rachel Glickhouse, Grist

Rachel Glickhouse is the director of editorial partnerships at Grist and an advisor to the Democracy Day project. She has worked at the News Revenue Hub, the COVID Tracking Project, ProPublica and Univision, and she has taught at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and the New School.

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One of our most popular panels every year - we give step by step techniques to persuade reluctant subjects to go on camera. And then when you have them in the hot seat, there is, indeed, an art to your questioning. Learn from the best here.

Speakers

Tony Kovaleski, KMGH-TV, Denver, CO

Tisha Thompson, ESPN

Tisha is most well-known these days for her investigation of wire transfers sent from the bank account of MLB superstar Shohei Ohtani to an illegal bookmaker, which included Tisha's interviews with Ohtani's former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara that immediately resulted in a federal investigation and Mizuhara pleading guilty to bank fraud. A former local investigative TV reporter, Tisha appears on all of ESPN's platforms, including SportsCenter.

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Lee Zurik, WVUE-TV, New Orleans, LA

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You have the seeds of a promising investigation, but how do you develop the sources you’ll need to deliver the goods? Two veteran reporters will break down how they worked their way inside institutions that seemed impenetrable, from the US Supreme Court to major corporations.

Speakers

Justin Elliott, ProPublica

Justin Elliott has been a reporter with ProPublica since 2012, where he covers business and politics. Last year he was one of the reporters covering U.S. Supreme Court justices' hidden relationships with billionaire political donors. He was also on the team of reporters documenting how the rich avoid taxes for “The Secret IRS Files” series.

Connect: X, LinkedIn, Personal website: https://justinelliott.co/

Anna Wener, CBS News

Anna Werner is CBS News Senior Consumer Investigative Correspondent. In 2024, Werner won her second Polk Award and the Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism. She’s won three IRE awards, two duPont-Columbia awards, two Peabody awards, four SPJ awards, three Scripps-Howard awards, six Murrow awards, 35 Emmy awards, and been named ‘journalist of the year’ seven times. Previously, she was an investigative reporter at WISH, KHOU, KPIX, and CIR.

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Whether covering a mass shooting or a breaking political scandal, reporters need to know how to thoroughly and quickly background people involved in breaking news events. In this panel, journalists will share concrete tips about mining social media accounts, maximizing Nexis searches, accessing public records online, finding friends and relatives and turning hunches into distinctive stories.

Speakers

Michael Biesecker, The Associated Press

Michael Biesecker is a global investigative reporter for The Associated Press. Biesecker’s work tracking potential war crimes in Ukraine was recognized with the 2022 IRE Gold Medal, as well as the top award for investigative reporting from the Overseas Press Club of America. He was a contributor to the AP team that won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Biesecker also teaches investigative and environmental reporting at Georgetown University.

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Jennifer Gollan, San Francisco Chronicle

PJ Randhawa, WMAQ-TV, Chicago, IL

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Hannah Dreyfus, The Arizona Republic

Hannah Dreyfus reports on gender justice, child welfare and higher education for The Arizona Republic's investigative team; previously, she was a fellow at ProPublica. Her investigation into Liberty University's handling of sexual assault contributed to a historic fine and received national recognition, including the 2022 Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics in Journalism Award and a National Award in investigative reporting from the Education Writers Association.

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Asia Fields, ProPublica

Asia Fields is an engagement reporter at ProPublica, where she focuses on crowdsourced and community-driven investigations. She has recently worked on projects related to school facilities and discipline. Previously, she was on The Seattle Times’ investigative team, where she reported on how Washington state colleges handled Title IX cases. Her reporting led to a state law requiring colleges to share information about employee misconduct as part of the hiring process.

Connect: Instagram, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asiafields/, Threads, X

Kenny Jacoby, USA TODAY

Thomas Peele, EdSource

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Hospitals are among the largest employers in many communities across the U.S. but often don't receive much scrutiny. We'll teach you the basics about how a hospital functions, including how to find and analyze little-examined financial reports and other public records that you can track down for your local hospitals within minutes. You'll also come away with tips for finding sources and navigating around the health privacy law HIPAA — plus, you'll bring home plenty of story ideas. If you've ever felt intimidated by health care reporting, this session is for you.

Speakers

Melanie Evans, Wall Street Journal

John Hillkirk, KFF HEALTH NEWS

John Hillkirk was at USA Today for 33 years before joining KFF Health News in 2016. John’s investigative team at KFF Health News has won a Loeb Award, a Goldsmith Prize, a Polk Award, a Sigma Delta Chi award for public service, the Batten Medal from the News Leaders Association, two National Press Club awards, and two Pulitzer Prize finalists.

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Kristen Hwang, CalMatters

Kristen Hwang is a health reporter for CalMatters covering health care access, abortion and reproductive health, workforce issues, drug costs and emerging public health matters. Her work has been recognized by the Association of Health Care Journalists, Radio Television Digital News Association, Sacramento Press Club and more.

Maya Kaufman, POLITICO New York

Maya Kaufman is a health care reporter with POLITICO's New York bureau. She previously covered the business of health care for Crain's New York Business. She graduated from Kenyon College and received a master's degree from Columbia Journalism School, where she was a fellow at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Reporting.

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Come hear how your colleagues abroad are fighting back with extraordinary stories, holding power to account despite the worst kinds of corruption, crime and outright deceit. The panel will give a rapid-fire tour of inspired muckraking from around the world.

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“The Landlord & the Tenant,” by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and ProPublica, took a bold approach to telling an investigative story: 14,000 words; no nut graph; 36 short chapters, all based on scenes. The braided narrative won the National Magazine Award for feature writing, the first time ever for a double-bylined story. Co-authors Raquel Rutledge and Ken Armstrong will talk inspiration and structure; what makes a successful partnership; and how to keep a narrative rolling without sacrificing your investigative findings.

Speakers

Ken Armstrong, Bloomberg

Ken Armstrong now works at Bloomberg. He’s won Pulitzer Prizes for investigative and explanatory reporting and shared in two staff Pulitzers for breaking news. Other awards include a Peabody for radio and the National Magazine Award for feature writing. He co-wrote the story that became the Netflix series, “Unbelievable.” He was the McGraw Professor of Writing at Princeton and co-authored the book, “Scoreboard, Baby,” winner of the Edgar Award for nonfiction.

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Raquel Rutledge, The Examination

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How to cover breaking news - and then take it further. Concert tragedies, missing people and children, bridge and building collapses. How to stay on a big story and advance it from an investigative perspective.

Speakers

Eric Flack, WUSA-TV, Washington, D.C.

Daniela Ibarra, KSAT

Daniela Ibarra is a reporter at KSAT in San Antonio. She returned home after two years in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her reporting at KTUL led to a change in state law, exposed public safety issues and held leaders accountable. Daniela began her career at KTXS in Abilene, Texas. She serves as the Secretary-Treasurer for the Society of Professional Journalists. Daniela graduated from the University of North Texas and is the proud daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants.

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Jessica McMaster, KSHB-TV, Kansas City, MO

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Just as lower-tech cheapfakes – rather than video deepfakes – did greater harm to elections in recent years, simulated voice fakes (using AI voice cloning tools) pose a potentially greater threat than face-swaps and other video fakes in the seismic election year of 2024. They have already affected elections in Slovakia and Nigeria, and tried to deceive Democratic voters in New Hampshire in the US. They are often combined with robocalls – an existing blind spot for investigative reporters – and timed to a few days before voter registration and election deadlines, when there is too little time to refute them. In this panel, hear from disinformation experts on new techniques to detect and trace audio fakes; how to counter politicians’ “It must have been a deepfake” denials about real audio obtained by reporters; and how to minimize the harm the phenomenon poses to audiences.

Speakers

Dean Jackson, Public Circle, LLC

Dean Jackson is principal of Public Circle, LLC and a specialist in democracy, media and technology. In 2023, he was named an inaugural Tech Policy Press reporting fellow and an affiliate fellow with the Propaganda Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. He was previously an investigative analyst with the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol and has ten years of experience in the think tank sector.

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Rowan Philp, Global Investigative Journalism Network

Naomi Zeveloff, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

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Matt Drange, Business Insider

Matt Drange is a reporter at Business Insider, previously with The Information, FORBES magazine and The Center for Investigative Reporting. He's spent the past two years investigating educator sexual abuse in K-12 schools across America. In addition to IRE, Drange volunteers with SABEW's First Amendment Committee and SPJ NorCal’s Freedom of Information Committee. He graduated from Columbia University and teaches journalism at Cal Poly Humboldt and Laney College. 

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Jakob McWhinney, Voice of OC

Marina Villeneuve, Salon

Marina Villeneuve is an investigative journalist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 2023, she graduated from Columbia University's Lede Program in data journalism and was a USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism National Fellow for a broadcast series she led on sexual abuse in Massachusetts public schools. She worked for six years as a statehouse reporter for The Associated Press in Maine and New York.

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Four members of The New York Times graphics department will break down the reporting and storytelling techniques behind their spatial investigations and narratives using 3-D. These pieces have combined traditional digging, meticulous spatial reporting and highly technical 3-D innovation to cover some of the biggest news stories.

Panelists will take you behind the scenes of their recent projects. They will discuss the ins and outs of spatial and open source reporting; how they navigate building, construction and engineering plans; how they overcome reporting roadblocks; and the storyboarding process that allows them to pull the pieces together, both narratively and visually. Their editor will moderate the panel, and offer insights into how these massively collaborative projects are edited.

Speakers

Haeyoun Park, The New York Times

Haeyoun Park is a deputy editor in the graphics department at The New York Times, where she has edited award-winning visual stories. She first joined the department as a graphics editor in 2006, and for a decade, she led the desk’s reporting on national issues. She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.

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Anjali Singhvi, The New York Times

Anjali Singhvi is a reporter and senior staff editor for spatial investigations at The New York Times. She covers a range of topics and specializes in investigative visual journalism in which she combines traditional reporting techniques with advanced spatial analysis. She is an expert in forensic 3D reconstructions and digital investigations. Ms. Singhvi is a trained architect and holds a master’s degree in Urban Planning from Columbia University in New York.

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Jeremy White, The New York Times

Jeremy White is a graphics editor for The New York Times. He contributes to visual stories that span many desks, including international, climate and science. He has taught for many years at Columbia University.

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Speakers

Mark Albert, Hearst Television

Amy DiPierro, EdSource

Amy DiPierro covers California State University —the nation's largest four-year public university system— at EdSource. She previously worked as a data journalist at the Center for Public Integrity. She graduated from Swarthmore College and the master's journalism program at Stanford University, where she was a Knight-Hennessy Scholar.

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John Kelly, CBS News

John Kelly is Vice President of Data Journalism for CBS News and Stations, leading data-driven investigations, enterprise and innovation for the network and 14 local stations from New York to Los Angeles. He's built and led investigative data journalism units at USA Today and ABC News. A champion for collaboration across newsrooms, his teams' stories include winners of Edward R. Murrow Awards, Emmy Awards, and Goldsmith Prize, and finalists for the Pulitzer Prize.

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Mc Nelly Torres, Center for Public Integrity

Mc Nelly Torres is an award-winning investigative journalist and editor at the Center for Public Integrity, where she leads a team investigating inequality. Before, Torres worked as an investigative producer for NBC6 in Miami and co-founded FCIR.org. Torres is a product of newspapers including the Sun-Sentinel and the San Antonio Express-News. Torres was the first Latina to be elected to the IRE board of directors. She was a recipient of the Gwen Ifill Award in 2022.

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Scottie Hunter, WAFB

Scottie Hunter is the co-anchor of 9News at Five and serves as the lead investigative reporter at WAFB in Baton Rouge, LA. Most recently, he exposed alleged police misconduct at the Brave Cave, a secretive facility where officers are accused of beating and strip-searching certain people in their custody in an off-the-books manner. He, his wife Jasmine, his son Jason and dog Bear enjoy calling Baton Rouge home.

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Kerry Kavanaugh, WFXT-TV, Boston, MA

Ross Palombo, KCBS-TV, Los Angeles, CA

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Rob Cribb, Toronto Star

Barbara Gray, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY

Barbara Gray is a research methods professor and oversees Newmark J-School’s Research Center. She is the former director of news research at The New York Times and a recognized expert on investigative research.

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Derek Willis, University of Maryland

Derek Willis teaches data journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. Previously he has worked at ProPublica, The New York Times, The Washington Post and other news organizations. He runs OpenElections.

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If you write it, they will come: this has never been true. When news avoidance and mistrust is rampant, it’s more important than ever before to make sure that the people who are impacted by the harms we investigate can understand our findings in a way that is accessible and clear. Learn creative engagement and distribution strategies to make sure your work finds its readers.

Speakers

Owen Berg, NYU Studio 20 and The City

Darla Cameron, The Texas Tribune

Darla Cameron is the interim chief product officer at The Texas Tribune. She guides product development and management, engineering and design, working closely across the organization to deliver the Tribune’s journalism in fresh and innovative ways that build trust with more Texans. Darla was previously the managing editor for visual journalism, overseeing the work of the photo, multimedia and data visuals teams. She serves on the board of IRE.

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Sahana Jayaraman, The Arizona Republic

Sahana Jayaraman is an award-winning investigative data reporter at The Arizona Republic. She mostly works in R and Python.

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Caitlin McGlade, Arizona Republic

Caitlin is an award-winning investigative reporter at the Arizona Republic and a data professor at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Her most recent series exposing widespread violence in assisted living facilities prompted a new law that created tougher assisted living standards and also a state takeover of a troubled facility.

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María Méndez, The Texas Tribune

Andrew Pantazi, The Tributary

Andrew Pantazi is the editor of The Tributary, a nonprofit investigative newsroom based in Jacksonville, Florida. He previously worked at The Florida Times-Union and as a union organizer with the NewsGuild-CWA.

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Learn how to build respectful, reciprocal relationships with Indigenous communities when researching and sharing their stories, and avoiding extractive journalism.

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Karyn Pugliese, Canadaland

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We'll teach reporters how to turn their print into audio storytelling. Fundamentals of longform audio. Finding sources, gaining their buy-in, creating a narrative arc, identifying soundbites and putting it all together.

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Sitara Nieves, Poynter

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Schools are the new battleground in the culture wars — with state and national organizations, teachers’ unions, parents and students clashing over curricula, gender, sports, bathrooms and more. What are the connections behind the multiple efforts to regulate what happens in the classroom, and what’s the endgame? Join the panel to discuss how children and families have become the focal point in politics and the consequences of anti-trans policies on them.

This session was planned in collaboration with TJA. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Tat Bellamy-Walker, Seattle Times

Taylor Lorenz, The Washington Post

Taylor Lorenz is a technology columnist at The Washington Post and host of the Power User podcast on Vox media, a weekly tech and online culture show. She covers social media, the content creator industry, and online radicalization. She has written for the New York Times, New York Magazine, and more.

Cora Neas, KXAN

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This session is sponsored by the Lumina Foundation. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Michael Burke, EdSource

Adam Echelman, CalMatters

Adam Echelman covers community colleges for CalMatters through a partnership with Open Campus. Before CalMatters, he worked as an equity reporter at the Modesto Bee, where his coverage received a California News Publishers Association award. For three years, he served as the executive director of Libraries Without Borders, a nonprofit organization that helps expand access to information. He’s a graduate of Yale University and is fluent in Spanish and French.

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Journalists have used satellite data to map flooding, illegal deforestation, methane emissions, high-risk zones for future epidemics and much more. We’ll cover accessing and analyzing satellite data with platforms like Google Earth Engine and Global Forest Watch to produce investigations that break new ground with help from the sky.

Speakers

Isabela Barriga, World Resources Institute, Global Forest Watch

Isabela is a Community Engagement Manager for Global Forest Watch (GFW) at the World Resources Institute. She works across GFW to strengthen usership and the impact of GFW solutions by assessing and addressing the needs of GFW’s global user community. This includes managing virtual engagement opportunities, developing training resources, cultivating partnerships, building an online user community, and capturing and writing user stories.

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Carl Churchill, The Wall Street Journal

Carl Churchill is a graphics reporter with The Wall Street Journal. He primarily covers issues related to climate, ecology, and U.S. news. He joined the Journal after working for Woodwell Climate Research Center, a climate science organization based in Massachusetts. While there, he received recognition for his graphics work on Amazon deforestation and Arctic climate change. He has a master's in GIS from Arizona State University.

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Deborah Nelson, University of Maryland

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Whether covering a criminal trial or civil dispute, journalists reporting on high-profile cases have found themselves barred from accessing court records and proceedings that are essential to providing the public with in-depth information about how the judicial system is functioning. This session will discuss the types of information and proceedings that courts must make publicly available, and share lessons learned from recent instances where journalists and news organizations have successfully challenged undue efforts to limit access in important cases at both the state and federal level.

This session is sponsored by Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

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Katie Townsend, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

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Racial/ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ persons, women... journalists who are members of these groups and others can enrich their stories with their experiences, but they can often also face criticism for their closeness to their subjects. When the story is investigative, the need for objectivity and transparency in reporting grows. Find out how a group of journalists covers its own community and works to ensure trust among its audience - tactics that may work for you or your newsroom, too.

Speakers

Josh Hinkle, KXAN

Josh Hinkle is KXAN’s director of investigations and innovation, leading the station’s duPont and IRE Award-winning investigative team on multiple platforms. He also leads KXAN’s political coverage as executive producer and host of “State of Texas,” a weekly statewide program focused on the Texas Legislature and elections. In 2021, he was elected to the IRE Board of Directors and currently serves as its vice president.

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Barbara Rodriguez, The 19th

Barbara Rodriguez is the state politics and voting reporter at The 19th, an independent nonprofit newsroom that writes about gender, politics and policy. She previously covered politics and health care at the Des Moines Register. Before that, she was the Iowa statehouse reporter for The Associated Press. Barbara recently finished a two-year term on the IRE Board of Directors.

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Kat Stafford, Reuters

Kat Stafford is the Global Race and Justice Editor. She is an award-winning journalist, whose work has centered on covering and investigating how structural racism has fueled inequity across America. She is the former vice president of IRE's Board of Directors.

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How are you sure that great source with the perfect quote isn't too good to be true? Even great reporters can get tricked by fake names or sketchy backgrounds. We'll walk through some websites and strategies you can use to create a routine and spot potential red flags before you get burned. This session is great for new reporters or anyone who wants to background people more thoroughly.

Speaker

Kate Howard, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting

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Brutally honest talk from three TV veterans about the mistakes they've made, the questions they've missed, and the trust they’ve misplaced in 60+ years of combined reporting. Come join the conversation as they open up about the important lessons they've learned the hard way.

Speakers

Cindy Galli, ABC News

Cindy Galli is Executive Producer of ABC News’ Investigative Unit, leading a team of award-winning reporters and producers who investigate government fraud, corporate corruption, racial injustice and consumer and environmental issues. She led the network’s Uvalde:365 commitment to remain in and cover the community after a mass shooting. Her team’s recent recognitions include a duPont-Columbia baton and three national Murrow awards. Cindy also oversees collaborative projects between ABC News and local stations and affiliates.

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Lori Jane Gliha, Scripps News

Lori Jane Gliha is a national investigative reporter for Scripps News. She specializes in smart, ethical journalism and has been a finalist for a duPont-Columbia Award and the IRE competition. She spent years uncovering critical details in the death of Elijah McClain, who was forcibly detained by police and injected – by paramedics -with ketamine. Her recent original reporting examines the impact of the fentanyl crisis on babies and young children.

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Rick Yarborough, WRC-TV, Washington, D.C.

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John Diedrich, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Marquette University

John Diedrich is an investigative reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Through an O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University, Diedrich examined gun deaths in Wisconsin, reframing the issue in deep reporting with gun owners. Earlier work revealed electrical fire risk and dangers in factories, MMA and hospitals. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, he also received a George Polk and Gerald Loeb, among other awards.

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Mollie Muchna, Trusting News

Mollie Muchna is a project manager at Trusting News. Most of her journalism career has been spent working in audience and engagement journalism in legacy newsrooms across the Southwest. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she is also an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism.

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Tina Rosenburg, Solutions Journalism Network

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George Joseph, The City

Lauren McGaughy, The Texas Newsroom (Based at KUT, Austin's NPR Station)

Lauren McGaughy is an investigative reporter and editor for The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration of NPR stations in Texas. She focuses on criminal justice, governmental ethics and LGBTQ issues. In 2020, the Headliners Foundation honored her work on how police use hypnosis to investigate crimes. Lauren previously worked for The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle and New Orleans Times-Picayune. She loves cats, cemeteries and comic books. Ask about her wig collection!

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Phil Williams, NewsChannel5

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Rob Byer, The Courier Journal

Rob Byers has decades of experience in reporting, editing and project planning. The Amity, Pa., native rose from intern to executive editor while at the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia. He was an editor on the Gazette's first-ever Pulitzer Prize (investigative reporting) in 2017. After joining The Courier Journal in Louisville, Ky., in 2018, Byers was lead editor on a quick-turn investigation that won the Pulitzer for breaking news in 2020.

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Stephanie Kuzydym, The Courier Journal

Stephanie Kuzydym is an investigative journalist for The Courier Journal. For the last decade, her reporting largely focused on health and safety of athletes, including “Safer Sidelines,” which uncovered the many ways high schools, athletic associations and lawmakers have failed to prepare for the worst-case scenario – sudden death in sports. Her work received awards from the Online News Association, the Associated Press Sports Editors and the Kentucky Press Association.

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Maya Miller, ProPublica

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Veteran investigative reporters reprise a classic panel and list obscure but powerful documents that anyone can use to turbocharge a project or bulk-up daily beat coverage. They also provide practical guidelines for unearthing, scrutinizing, managing and cross-referencing routine documents to unleash their full investigative power.

Speakers

James Grimaldi, Wall Street Journal

Cheryl W. Thompson, NPR

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International illicit financial flows affect so many areas of life from crime to the democratic process. This session will lay out the top financial crimes that you should know about — and how to investigate them. Learn how bad actors hide these transactions in plain site.

Speakers

Martha Mendoza, Associated Press

A two-time Pulitzer Prize and Emmy winner, Martha Mendoza’s reports have prompted Congressional hearings and new legislation, Pentagon investigations and White House responses. She was part of a team whose investigations into slavery in the Thai seafood sector have led to the freedom of more than 2,000 men.

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Drew Sullivan, OCCRP

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From pitch to air, how an initial and maybe obscure tip led to successful investigative stories. Challenges, work arounds, solutions, successes – plus collaborations, partnerships, team projects and more! We pick apart compelling content to find out how they got the end result.

Speakers

Jennifer Cobb, KHOU-TV, Houston, TX

Scott Friedman, KXAS-TV, Dallas/Fort Worth, TX

Eva Parks, NBC 5/KXAS-TV

Eva Parks is the resident watchdog for KXAS-TV’s award-winning team covering big government, fraud, education and exposing safety issues in North Texas and beyond. While data and open records are her jam, Parks loves breaking news and producing long-form stories that matters. Parks has been honored with multiple national awards but her greatest honor is exposing the truth and advocating for those who may not have a voice.

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Jeremy Rogalski, KHOU-TV, Houston

Investigative Reporter Jeremy Rogalski is a three-time recipient of the IRE award and duPont Columbia University award, the broadcast recipient of the Pulitzer Prize. In his 23-year career at KHOU-TV in Houston, TX, Jeremy’s exclusive reports have changed policy, sparked criminal prosecutions and helped countless Texans along the way. He’s a native Chicagoan and die-hard Cubs fan, who somehow convinced his lovely wife to name their first child Nicholas Wrigley Rogalski.

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From the collapse of a condo building in Florida to the mass shooting in Uvalde to the wildfires that killed over a hundred people in Hawaii, Mike Baker has consistently found unique investigative angles on major national stories. Across the newsroom on the tech team, Ryan Mac’s relentless sourcing has enabled him to break news and pull back the curtain on key figures in the industry, from Elon Musk to Peter Thiel.

The two reporters will interview each other about how they find stories, develop sources, stay organized, and keep longer-term stories afloat while tending to more urgent reporting.

Speakers

Mike Baker, The New York Times

Ryan Mac, The New York Times

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John Diedrich, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Marquette University

John Diedrich is an investigative reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Through an O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University, Diedrich examined gun deaths in Wisconsin, reframing the issue in deep reporting with gun owners. Earlier work revealed electrical fire risk and dangers in factories, MMA and hospitals. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, he also received a George Polk and Gerald Loeb, among other awards.

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Tina Rosenburg, Solutions Journalism Network

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Scammers' schemes evolve rapidly, and it can be hard to keep up with their tactics. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) can help.

In this demo, reporters will:

-Learn insider tips on how to use BBB's Scam Tracker tool

-Discover how to mine the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel data for information gems

-Explore case studies demonstrating the use of BBB's resources and tools

After this hourlong demo, any intrepid reporter interested in uncovering fraud will be equipped with the tools to tackle a variety of systemic scams.

Speaker

Brian Edwards, Better Business Bureau

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Eric Fan, Bloomberg News

Eric Fan is an investigative data journalist at Bloomberg News, where his work investigating US gun exports was a 2024 Pulitzer finalist and winner of IRE's Tom Renner Award. He previously reported for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Columbia University's Brown Institute for Media Innovation.

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Cheryl Phillips, Stanford University

Alain Stephens, The Trace

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Increasingly, the subjects of stories are not just denying wrongdoing. They are attacking journalists -- launching PR campaigns to lie about them, putting up billboards to belittle them and even opening criminal investigations into their work. On this panel, reporters who have been through the wringer will discuss how to handle it with grace, and how to know when to make it part of the story.

Speakers

Katherine Long, Business Insider

Katherine Long is a Business Insider's national desk reporter, focused on quick-turn investigations. Previously, she reported on Amazon for Business Insider and The Seattle Times.

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Taylor Lorenz, The Washington Post

Taylor Lorenz is a technology columnist at The Washington Post and host of the Power User podcast on Vox media, a weekly tech and online culture show. She covers social media, the content creator industry, and online radicalization. She has written for the New York Times, New York Magazine, and more.

Brian Rosenthal, The New York Times

Stephanie Sugars, U.S. Press Freedom Tracker

Stephanie Sugars is the senior reporter for the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, documenting press freedom violations across the U.S. A graduate of NYU's GloJo program in journalism and international relations, her work focuses on human rights, politics and targeted violence. She has previously worked at the Committee to Protect Journalists and the Post-Conflict Research Center, and her reporting has appeared in Al Jazeera, Columbia Journalism Review and Balkan Diskurs.

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Collaborating with other stations, nonprofits, or print/digital organizations can level up your investigative game. Come learn how to pitch a collab and best practices for managing a collab. You'll hear horror stories and award winning successes to help guide your next collaboration.

Speakers

Jodie Fleischer, Cox Media Group

Tonya Simpson, ABC News

Julie Watts, CBS News California Investigates

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A reporter brings in a promising idea. How do you assess what it’s going to take to land the story in the most explosive and compelling form possible? And how do you build in checkpoints to know when things are going off the rails? Three veteran editors will interrogate each other's approaches and share concrete tips any journalist — whether you’re a reporter or manager — can use to hone their own story ideas.

Speakers

Dean Baquet, The New York Times

Dean Baquet leads a local investigative NYT fellowship. He served as Executive Editor of The New York Times from May 2014 until June 2022. Mr. Baquet served in the highest-ranked position in The NYT's newsroom and oversaw its news report in all its various forms.

Mark Katches, Tampa Bay Times

Ron Nixon, The Associated Press

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Gonzalo Magana, ABC10

Gonzalo Magaña is an award-winning journalist and the Director of Special Projects and Audience Engagement at ABC10, TEGNA’s ABC affiliate in Sacramento, CA. In 2017, Gonzalo created the ABC10 Originals team, specializing in long-form and investigative reporting. In 2021, he launched and oversees the Race and Culture Content Team, dedicated to reporting with and about diverse communities. Prior to joining TEGNA, Gonzalo spent 12 years working in Spanish broadcast news.

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Mollie Muchna, Trusting News

Mollie Muchna is a project manager at Trusting News. Most of her journalism career has been spent working in audience and engagement journalism in legacy newsrooms across the Southwest. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, where she is also an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism.

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Sabrina Sanchez, ABC10

Kate Sosin, The 19th

Kate Sosin is an LGBTQ+ reporter at The 19th. Their work has appeared in lots of places, and you are also awesome.

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Toxic chemicals are all around us. Journalists are routinely having to report on them. From water laced with forever chemicals to polluting industry contaminating the air with carcinogens, environmental and public health reporters are often encountering toxics stories. This session will be a primer on how to responsibly report on toxic chemicals. We’ll talk about the pitfalls of industry-reported data, how to navigate murky state and federal exposure standards, and ways to effectively communicate risk.

Speakers

Tony Briscoe, Los Angeles Times

Lily Jamali, Marketplace

Maya Miller, ProPublica

Naveena Sadasivam, Grist

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For reporters preparing to cover elections at all levels in 2024, this session will provide a primer on journalists’ newsgathering rights, particularly at polling places and conventions; how public records laws govern access to election-related information; and the kinds of free legal support available for election coverage. Participants will come away with a better understanding of their rights, and practical tips and legal resources — from online guides to emergency hotlines — they can turn to if they have questions or encounter issues.

Speaker

Adam Marshall, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

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Issues affecting trans communities are cropping up on every beat. What reporting and editing tools will help you learn more about doing fair, accurate, and hard-hitting journalism on these topics? Who's already doing stellar journalism on trans communities? Join experts on trans coverage for quick talks on helpful tools, case studies of tricky editorial issues, and showcases of stellar coverage of trans communities.

This session was planned in collaboration with TJA. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

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Yvette Cabrera, The Center for Public Integrity

Yvette Cabrera is a senior reporter at the investigative news nonprofit, the Center for Public Integrity, where she covers social and economic inequalities with a focus on environmental justice issues. She serves as president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and is a founding member of The Uproot Project, a network for environmental journalists of color.

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Matt Pearce, Media Guild of the West

Matt Pearce is president of Media Guild of the West, a local union of The NewsGuild-CWA that represents journalists across a dozen newsrooms in Southern California, Arizona and Texas. He was a longtime reporter for the Los Angeles Times and a graduate of the University of Missouri. He lives in Los Angeles.

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Jason Ruiz, Long Beach Post

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Bring your investigation to life! Creative visuals, graphics, aftereffects, unique interview framing and more. Join this group of storytellers who will show how they translate their reporting to impactful stories that keep viewers glued, no matter the length or subject matter.

Speakers

Brendan Keefe, Atlanta News First - Gray Television

Brendan Keefe is Chief Investigator for Atlanta News First Investigates and InvestigateTV. He’s one of the most-decorated investigative reporters in the nation. Brendan’s investigations have earned the George Foster Peabody Award, the DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton, six National Edward R. Murrow Awards, a National Emmy, an IRE Award, and more than 125 regional Emmys.

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Beth Peak, GrayTV

Cristin Severance, WRAL-TV, Raleigh, NC

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Kathy Best, Howard Center for Investigative Journalism

Kathy Best is the inaugural director of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland. She previously was the executive editor of The Seattle Times, editor of the Missoulian in Missoula, MT, and a top editor at The Baltimore Sun, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Students in the Howard Center produce national investigations, often working with other universities or professional partners.

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Adam Candee, Legal Sports Report

Paula Lavigne, ESPN

Paula Lavigne is an investigative reporter for ESPN.

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The tactic of submitting records requests about yourself. This can sometimes yield new information that a public relations person provided, or can cause a public relations person to provide information that they had been declining to provide. It also shows who they may be turning to for advice or outside help on your story. I have done this several times, with great results as well as little to no results.

Speakers

Keri Blakinger, Los Angeles Times

Keri Blakinger is a Los Angeles Times reporter covering the Sheriff's Department and county jails. Previously, she covered prisons for The Marshall Project and criminal justice for the Houston Chronicle. She is a two-time Pulitzer finalist and the author of Corrections in Ink.

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Tyler Kingkade, NBC NEWS

Tyler Kingkade is a national reporter at NBC News, based in Los Angeles. He writes about abuse in treatment facilities, culture wars and extremism, and conflicts in city governments.

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Jason Leopold, Bloomberg News

Jason Leopold is a senior investigative reporter for Bloomberg News. He received the 2023 Gerald Loeb Award for investigative reporting and the 2022 George Polk Award for health reporting, and he has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting. In 2016, Leopold was awarded the IRE FOI award and was inducted into the National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame by the Freedom Forum Institute and the Newseum.

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Join the team from the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication as they preview a new professional investigative editing certificate program they’re developing for working journalists who would like to move into investigative editing or those who just want to sharpen their investigative skills.

Speakers

Maud Beelman, Arizona State University/Howard Center for Investigative Reporting

Mark Greenblatt, Arizona State University/Howard Center for Investigative Reporting

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Anti-Black and anti-Jewish hate crimes were the most commonly reported type of bias, according to FBI data in 2022. Within the country’s 10 largest cities, the number of reported hate crimes rose even more – 22% from 2021 to 2022, making last year the second consecutive year they hit a record high. While the number of hate crime incidents is up by 7% from 2021, the spike in incidents is partially due to more law enforcement agencies reporting their data. How do we report on this data without inflamming hateful rhetoric? We will discuss how to identify it and report on it more thoughtfully and accurately to not be manipulated by special interest groups; political party partisanship and avoiding harmful tropes.

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When you put plastic wrappers, old batteries or used clothes into a recycling bin, how do you know if it actually gets recycled or is dumped thousands of miles away? As global plastic consumption continues to soar and the shift to clean energy creates new waste streams, more garbage meant for recycling is being exported to countries that are ill-equipped to handle the rich world’s trash.

Investigative journalists are applying innovative reporting techniques to shed light on the opaque global market in waste. The panel will discuss how data analysis, remote sensing and ship, container and GPS tracking has been used in recent investigations into waste dumping, from US trash shipped to Mexico to Canadian packaging dumped in Myanmar.

Speaker

Charlotte Alfred, Lighthouse Reports

Charlotte is senior editor at investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports, developing cross-border projects that combine OSINT, data journalism and money trails tools. She focuses on investigations in countries affected by conflict, in partnership with local and exiled journalists. Previously based in the Middle East, she has worked in news, features and documentary, reporting on migration, misinformation and conflict.

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Lomi Kriel, ProPublica/Texas Tribune

Elliot Spagat, The Associated Press

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While reality TV can often feel more dystopian than authentic, this panel will use the Real Housewives franchise as a device to work through real-life reporting conundrums. We will explore crucial themes in investigative reporting such as conducting trauma-informed interviews, recognizing and dismantling racial bias in storytelling, preparing for accountability interviews, and more.

Speakers

Cary Aspinwall, The Marshall Project

Ko Bragg, The Markup

Marissa Evans,

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Greg Fox, WESH-TV 2 NBC (Hearst)

Greg Fox has been a journalist since 1982, working at WESH-TV Orlando (Hearst) since May 1987. He is the Investigative & Political reporter. He also worked at WYOU-TV and WGHP-TV. He’s won two national Walter Cronkite Awards for Excellence in TV Political Journalism, seven regional Emmys, as well as Edward R. Murrow, SPJ, FABJ, AP, & Green Eyeshade awards. Greg was also an adjunct professor at the University of Central Florida and Rollins College.

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Daniela Molina, Gray Television/InvestigateTV

Daniela Molina is a bilingual investigative journalist who has great interest in human trafficking and health care stories. Throughout her time at InvestigateTV she has uncovered nursing home abuse, desecration of Black cemeteries, lack of updated emergency medical kits on airlines and has exposed secrecy in military medical malpractice. Daniela Molina also has a Spanish consumer segment called “Cuidando Su Billetera” that airs on Gray TV’s Telemundo stations.

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Andy Pierrotti, WANF-TV, CBS Atlanta; InvestigateTV

Andy is a national award-winning investigative reporter who has received the duPont Columbia Award, George Foster Peabody, multiple Emmy, and Edward R. Murrow awards. His investigations have changed state laws, put people in prison, freed a man from jail, and led to historic state fines.

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Nicole Vap, CBS News

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Zachary Fryer-Biggs, Military.com

Zachary Fryer-Biggs is the Managing Editor for news at Military.com. Zach has been a national security journalist for more than a decade, during that time working as Newsweek’s Pentagon reporter and an investigative reporter covering national security for the Center for Public Integrity, among other positions. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Reveal, The Daily Beast, and other outlets.

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Sonner Kehrt, The War Horse

Sonner Kehrt is an investigative reporter at The War Horse. Her work has also been featured in The New York Times, WIRED magazine, Mother Jones, and other publications. She studied government at the US Coast Guard Academy and served for five years as Coast Guard officer before earning a masters in democracy and governance studies from Georgetown University and a masters of journalism from UC Berkeley.

Ron Nixon, The Associated Press

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Matt Topic, Loevy & Loevy

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Nearly 600 anti-trans bills were filed in 2023, and 2024 looks to be a continuation of that legislative onslaught. And that's not to mention fast-moving policies in school boards and state departments. What, exactly, do the laws and policies do, how are they being implemented, and who are they affecting? (Hint: Everyone, not just trans people). Come for a lively discussion of this astonishing flood of policies and the groups behind them.

This session was planned in collaboration with TJA. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Lil Kalish, HuffPost

Vivian McCall, The Stranger

Kate Sosin, The 19th

Kate Sosin is an LGBTQ+ reporter at The 19th. Their work has appeared in lots of places, and you are also awesome.

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In 2020, the LA Times published Maya Lau's investigation of the role of police public relations departments in Los Angeles. She found that the police department and sheriff's department employ a combined 67 people and spend more than $12 million per year on public relations. She also identified several instances in which PR staff across the country lied, released misleading body camera footage, and otherwise spun events to reflect favorably on police officers. In 2021, Sofía Mejías Pascoe at the Voice of San Diego published a similar investigation of police contracts with private PR and crisis response firms. Does the public know their money is being used to spin information about police conduct back to them? Maya and Sofía will offer a behind the scenes look at how their investigations came together and offer concrete suggestions to journalists interested in taking on similar investigations.

Speakers

Laura Bennett, The Center for Just Journalism

Maya Lau, Independent journalist

Maya Lau is a financial investigative researcher. She also hosts the personal finance podcast "Other People's Pockets." She's a former investigative journalist for the LATimes, where she covered the LA County Sheriff's Department. She also talks about career pivots from journalism.

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Sofia Mejias-Pascoe, inewsource

Sofía covers immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border through an accountability lens from her hometown of San Diego. She has written about shifting migration patterns along the border, Border Patrol pursuits and wage theft. She previously interned with the San Diego Union-Tribune and Voice of San Diego. She speaks English and Spanish.

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“We will know whether democracy lives or dies by the end of 2024” – Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maria Ressa, January 2024. How can investigative journalists hold political actors accountable in an era of rising autocracy, political violence, AI-driven disinformation, and other anti-democratic threats in this seismic global elections period? In this round-up session, journalists will share the key tools, strategies, and techniques that leading watchdog journalists around the world now recommend, from at-risk elections to “hybrid” democracies and autocratic states holding sham elections.

Speakers

Tamoa Calzadilla, Factchequeado

Rowan Philp, Global Investigative Journalism Network

Akhil Ranjan, ICFJ

Akhil Ranjan is a bilingual London-based freelance journalist with expertise in uncovering organised disinformation techniques in South Asia. He has worked with global media and tech organisations, including the BBC, Twitter, AFP and ICFJ, and possesses over a decade of experience in multimedia content production and digital investigation. Ranjan is passionate about contributing to the global fight against information pollution and making the internet a safer place.

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Beth Reinhard, The Washington Post

Naomi Zeveloff, Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)

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There was a time it was a matter of keeping your desk clean. But today’s investigative journalists have an overwhelming number of options about how to organize their work. We will present a few simple systems teams can use to make sure that every bit of content from pitch to publish is in a simple, well organized site. We’ll talk about annotating drafts (keep the lawyers happy), using video and audio transcriptions, and security challenges. Bring concerns you face and solutions you’ve developed to this session as we collaborate in true IRE style to share what we know.

This includes:

-Reporting Plans in 2024

-Two = Three: How teaming up can boost productivity, creativity and accuracy for investigative reporting.

-Managing Up: Making workplace decisions that benefit you and your editor

Speakers

Martha Mendoza, Associated Press

A two-time Pulitzer Prize and Emmy winner, Martha Mendoza’s reports have prompted Congressional hearings and new legislation, Pentagon investigations and White House responses. She was part of a team whose investigations into slavery in the Thai seafood sector have led to the freedom of more than 2,000 men.

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Ron Nixon, The Associated Press

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Yvette Cabrera, The Center for Public Integrity

Yvette Cabrera is a senior reporter at the investigative news nonprofit, the Center for Public Integrity, where she covers social and economic inequalities with a focus on environmental justice issues. She serves as president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and is a founding member of The Uproot Project, a network for environmental journalists of color.

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Norberto Santana, Voice of OC

Mc Nelly Torres, Center for Public Integrity

Mc Nelly Torres is an award-winning investigative journalist and editor at the Center for Public Integrity, where she leads a team investigating inequality. Before, Torres worked as an investigative producer for NBC6 in Miami and co-founded FCIR.org. Torres is a product of newspapers including the Sun-Sentinel and the San Antonio Express-News. Torres was the first Latina to be elected to the IRE board of directors. She was a recipient of the Gwen Ifill Award in 2022.

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Twenty years ago, Illinois began collecting some of the most robust data in the nation on traffic stops under legislation sponsored by then-Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama. By requiring police in every department across the state to record data about every traffic stop – including the race of the driver, the reason for the stop, the outcome and dozens of other data points – the hope was to better understand and address racial profiling.

On the 20th anniversary, WBEZ Chicago and the Investigative Project on Race and Equity obtained and analyzed 42.5 million records from more than 1,000 police jurisdictions across Illinois collected under the law. This first-of-its-kind analysis showed the problem has only gotten worse: the share of traffic stops involving Black drivers has risen over time, reaching all-time high levels in recent years.

Speakers

Jessica Alvarado, Chicago Public Media/WBEZ

Jessica Alvarado Gamez is an investigative Roy W. Howard Fellow on WBEZ’s data team. Previously, she earned her master’s degree in investigative journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Her work has been featured by The Associated Press, Chicago Sun-Times, Univision Arizona and Arizona PBS.

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Angela Caputo, Investigative Project on Race and Equity

Angela Caputo is an award-winning investigative reporter who specializes in using documents, databases, mapping and other analytical tools to expose abuses of power and lax government oversight. She's worked at The Chicago Reporter, American Public Media's APM Reports, the Chicago Tribune and Daily Southtown. She currently serves as the Project Director of the Investigative Project and teaches journalism at Loyola Marymount University.

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Matt Kiefer, WBEZ/Chicago Public Media

Matt Kiefer is a data journalist with WBEZ/Chicago Public Media.

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Alden Loury, Chicago Public Media/WBEZ

Alden Loury is the data projects editor at WBEZ, Chicago's NPR member station, and leads a five-person team of data journalists. Documenting segregation and racial inequality in housing, education, employment, the criminal justice system, economic development and politics have been a focus of his work for nearly 25 years in a variety of roles including reporter, editor, publisher, columnist, research director and policy analyst.

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Jason Knowles, WLS ABC 7

Jason Knowles is an Emmy award winning Consumer Investigative Reporter at WLS, ABC7 Chicago. He's been part of the ABC 7 I-Team for more than 10 years and has been at WLS for 20 years. Before joining WLS, Jason was an Investigative Reporter at WTVG 13 ABC in Toledo, Ohio.

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Kristine Lazar, KCAL/KCBS

Kristine Lazar is a consumer investigative reporter at KCAL/KCBS in Los Angeles. Kristine graduated Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley and has been at KCAL/KCBS since 2007. Kristine was a general assignment reporter for the bulk of her now 24-year career, until 2017, when she was tapped to launch the On Your Side consumer franchise. Kristine is also a mom to 3 children, a son and twin daughters.

Myriam Masihy, WSCV-TV, Miami, FL

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The Marshall Project’s Shoshana Walter and Nashville Public Radio’s Meribah Knight have been the lead reporters on stories featuring people who have been traumatized by unjust systems or practices. Their skill in producing this type of investigation was on full display in Knight's podcast The Kids of Rutherford County, produced by Serial, and Walter's recent New York Times magazine story and podcast about women who faced child abuse investigations and lost their newborns for taking prescribed medications during pregnancy.

Both have done a range of other stories, in both audio and print, in which they needed to earn the trust of people who have been victimized and hurt. In this session they’ll talk about how they earn that trust, approach interviews with a microphone, and the special challenges they face in asking people to revisit their pain.

Speakers

Meribah Knight, Nashville Public Radio

Meribah Knight is a senior reporter at Nashville Public Radio. She’s the host and creator of the Peabody Award-winning podcast The Promise and Serial’s recent podcast The Kids of Rutherford County. Knight has received numerous national awards for her reporting, including the George Foster Peabody and George Polk awards. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the Goldsmith Award, and twice for the National Magazine Award.

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Shoshana Walter, The Marshall Project

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We've seen incredible local journalists take down powerful officials, blow the lid off corruption, and hold their communities to unparalleled account. This session will focus on the amazing work journalists have done in the past year and how you can do that work yourself!

Speakers

Joshua Ceballos, WLRN News

Joshua Ceballos is an investigative reporter based in Miami, Florida. His work has appeared on WLRN.ORG, in the Miami New Times and The Miami Times. He is the recipient of an IRE award for audio reporting and an Esserman-Knight Journalism Award.

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Caitlin McGlade, Arizona Republic

Caitlin is an award-winning investigative reporter at the Arizona Republic and a data professor at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Her most recent series exposing widespread violence in assisted living facilities prompted a new law that created tougher assisted living standards and also a state takeover of a troubled facility.

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Anne Ryman, ABC15 Arizona

Anne Ryman is an investigative reporter at ABC15 Arizona in Phoenix. Before that, she was an investigative reporter for more than 20 years at The Arizona Republic. She was part of the newspaper's 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning team in explanatory reporting.

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In this session, you’ll learn from an experienced media attorney about the laws governing newsgathering activity, including going undercover, entering private property, using technology, gaining access to government proceedings and records, dealing with confidential sources, and more. Bring your questions and learn more about your rights to gather information.

Speaker

Jeffrey Hermes, Media Law Resource Center

Jeff Hermes is a Deputy Director of the Media Law Resource Center, a membership organization for media lawyers. Jeff previously served as the Director of the Digital Media Law Project at Harvard University’s Berkman Center; before that, he assisted a wide array of clients with media and intellectual property issues as a litigation attorney for fourteen years. Jeff went to Harvard Law School and received his undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, from Princeton.

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You've completed your reporting, gathered the evidence and interviewed the sources. It’s almost time to put your work into the world. From color-coded spreadsheets to presenting evidence to bosses and attorneys, we'll discuss techniques for conducting that final fact check for your investigations.

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Caresse Jackman, Gray Television/InvestigateTV

Caresse Jackman is national consumer investigative reporter with InvestigateTV/Gray Television. Caresse’s work shines a light on issues impacting consumers and marginalized communities. Her work has uncovered the desecration of African American cemeteries nationwide, exposed the complexities of replacing lead service lines across America and the issues surrounding appraisal bias for African American homeowners.

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Jared Kofsky, ABC News

Jared Kofsky produces longform and breaking news investigations for ABC News’ broadcast and digital platforms. He works from both the field and the network’s headquarters in New York, and has covered everything from decades-long waiting lists for public housing to Americans being detained in Russia to prison escapes. Jared previously served as the investigative producer for WCSC-TV in South Carolina and a reporter covering New Jersey economic development for Jersey Digs.

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Emerald Morrow, WTSP-TV, Tampa Bay, FL

Candice Nguyen, KNTV-TV, San Jose, CA

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Paul Beckett, Wall Street Journal

Olesia Bida, The Kyiv Independent

Alexander Borodikhin, Mediazona

Alexander Borodikhin is the editor of Mediazona English and a reporter with Mediazona’s Data Department. With years of experience in covering political repression and surveillance in Russia, he is leading and participating in data reporting projects, including the signature effort to tally the toll of Russian casualties in the war in Ukraine. He also oversees Mediazona’s efforts to bring critical wartime insights from and about Russia to larger global audiences

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Axel Gordh Humlesjö, Mission Investigate, SVT 1

T.J. Quinn, ESPN

T.J. Quinn joined ESPN in November 2007 as an investigative reporter for ESPN’s Enterprise Unit, which is charged with developing long-form, investigative features to be presented across multiple platforms. Quinn contributes to all aspects of ESPN’s news and information programming, including SportsCenter, Outside the Lines, ESPN .com and ESPN Radio.

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It's a department that affects everyone but is often the least-transparent. Learn about the pitfalls, technology, and small business problems all affected by unemployment.

Speakers

Lauren Hepler, CalMatters

Lauren Hepler is an investigative reporter covering labor and housing issues for CalMatters. Her previous stories have been published by the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, the Guardian and others.

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Brittany Johnston, WCVB

Dave Manoucheri, KCRA/Hearst Television

Dave Manoucheri is an award-winning journalist and documentary producer/director for KCRA in Sacramento. His 35 year career spans investigative journalism to historical documentaries.

Connect: X, Lindkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-manoucheri-6721885/

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Judges wield enormous power and often can only be removed for crimes and extreme wrongdoing, and therefore they are accountable to few. Most are not required to respond to public records requests. Federal jurists in particular operate in a world shrouded in secrecy -- and many are appointed for life.

Panelists reveal how to pierce the veil of judicial secrecy by uncovering corruption, abuse, harassment and hidden financial interests with data, documents, sources, strategies and little-known archives for both state and federal courts. These tips and story ideas will be useful for both beat and investigative reporters.

Speakers

Maya Dukmasova, Injustice Watch

Maya Dukmasova is a senior reporter at Injustice Watch. She reports on judges, prisons, housing and the courts. Before joining Injustice Watch in 2021, Maya was a senior writer at the Chicago Reader, where she produced award-winning long-form features and investigative stories, as well as profiles, film reviews and essays on a wide range of topics.

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Justin Elliott, ProPublica

Justin Elliott has been a reporter with ProPublica since 2012, where he covers business and politics. Last year he was one of the reporters covering U.S. Supreme Court justices' hidden relationships with billionaire political donors. He was also on the team of reporters documenting how the rich avoid taxes for “The Secret IRS Files” series.

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Lise Olsen, Texas Observer

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From getting CEOs to talk to deep diving into a company, a business investigation has its own sets of challenges. You'll hear from veteran print and broadcast journalists on navigating these challenges and how to turn a tip into a compelling corporate investigation. We will cover how to source up at companies you cover, especially those with NDAs, the aggressive nature of PR in business investigations and how to keep your cool when they are yelling at you and calling your editor as well as front running stories with press releases.

This session is sponsored by Bloomberg. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Olivia Carville, Bloomberg Businessweek

Olivia Carville is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News. She is an award-winning journalist who has written multiple cover stories for Businessweek magazine. A native of New Zealand, Olivia moved to New York City in 2017. She teaches investigative reporting techniques at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and serves as president of the New York Financial Writers' Association.

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Jane Sasseen, McGraw Center

Scott Zamost, CNBC

As the senior investigative producer for CNBC, Scott oversees investigative reports and documentaries. Scott joined CNBC in 2017 after nine years at CNN as a senior investigative producer. During his career, he has won more than 75 journalism awards, including two IRE awards, four national Emmy nominations, three National Headliner awards and 23 regional Emmys. A former newspaper reporter, he has spoken or moderated at IRE conferences every year since 2002.

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This session is sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

David Cay Johnston, Simon & Schuster/Syracuse U College of Law

Harriet Ryan, Los Angeles Times

Harriet Ryan is a Los Angeles Times investigative reporter. She has written about Phil Spector, Michael Jackson and Tom Girardi, USC, the State Bar of California, the Catholic Church, the Kabbalah Centre and Purdue Pharma. Ryan and two colleagues won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting. She has worked at Court TV and the Asbury Park Press. She is a Columbia University graduate.

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Deepa Bharath, The Associated Press

Ken Chitwood, Religion News Association

Ken Chitwood is a professional religion nerd, working as a scholar and newswriter. He is currently President of the Religion News Association, Editor of ReligionLink, as well as Faith and Immigration Reporter with Sojourners Magazine. He is a Senior Research Fellow with the Muslim Philanthropy Initiative at Indiana University and Affiliate of USC's Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

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Alejandra Molina, Boyle Heights Beat

James Queally, Los Angeles Times

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Learn how to balance being an investigative journalist who also needs to contribute daily to the news cycle. You can do both effectively! Hear from reporters about both quick-turn investigations in just a few days and larger investigation strategies. We'll also discuss the tools and strategies used to manage record requests and story ideas.

Speakers

Dan Krauth, Instagram=https://www.instagram.com/dankrauth/|X=https://twitter.com/DanKrauthABC7|Facebook=https://www.facebook.com/dankrauthreports/Linkedin=https://linkedin.com/in/dan-krauth-a25b846

Dan Krauth is an award-winning investigative journalist with WABC-TV Eyewitness News. His investigations have led to changes in local and state laws, from how plastic surgeons are disciplined in Florida to how squatters are defined in New York State law. He started as a producer in Rockford and worked at stations in Fort Wayne, Grand Rapids, West Palm Beach, and Miami before moving to New York City.

Lolita Lopez, KNBC

Lolita Lopez is an investigative reporter and anchor at NBC4 and has been part of the team since 2011. Lopez is part of the award-winning I-Team, digging deep into stories and cases that impact viewers throughout the Southland.

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Karla Ray, WFTV

Karla Ray wakes up Central Florida every weekend as an anchor on WFTV, and fights for the underserved as an investigative reporter with the 9 Investigates unit. Her work has led to significant changes, including legislation requiring regulations and standards for safehouses serving survivors of human trafficking.

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Kris Van Cleave, CBS News

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Katherine Eban, Vanity Fair

Alison Young, University of Missouri

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The panel will discuss entering a new environment as a manager, managing staff with strong opinions, helping staff avoid residual trauma from the stories they cover, and what to do if you inherit a team that has been under poor leadership in the past.

Speakers

Kate Howard, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting

Karyn Pugliese, Canadaland

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Does your investigation involve complex legal questions and you're unsure how to proceed? Bring your lunch and your questions for a personal discussion with some prominent media law experts that will be presenting throughout the conference. We'll provide drinks and dessert.

This session is sponsored by the TEGNA Foundation. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

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Matt Topic, Loevy & Loevy

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Grace Manthey, CBS News & Stations

Sarah Rafique, KTRK-TV, Houston, TX

Ashley Talley, WRAL-TV, Raleigh, NC

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This reporter-editor duo will discuss how to get the most out of this critical relationship. How can editors drive more ambitious reporting and help reporters focus on the right investigative targets? How can reporters work with editors to craft stronger leads, structure narratives and make stories more accessible to readers? Learn practical tips for collaborative editing that can make the process productive and painless.

Speakers

Matt Apuzzo, The New York Times

Megha Rajagopalan, The New York Times

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Do you have an investigative project you'd like to turn into a book? Are you searching for book ideas and mystified by the world of agents and advances? These reporters-turned-authors share their best advice on developing and selling a book proposal, financing the reporting and writing (we promise brass tacks!), and exploring options like indie publishers, podcasts, and docuseries.

Speakers

Maurice Chammah, The Marshall Project

Maurice Chammah is a staff writer at The Marshall Project and the author of Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty, which won the J. Anthony Lukas Work-In-Progress and Writer's League of Texas book awards. He was on a team that won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and his first podcast, "Just Say You're Sorry," was a 2024 Ambies nominee for Best True Crime Podcast. He lives in Austin, Texas.

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Mike Hixenbaugh, NBC News

Tracie McMillian, Capital & Main; Henry Holt & Co.

Tracie McMillan is an award-winning investigative journalist and an editor for worker organizing at Capital & Main. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller The American Way of Eating, and the 2024 title, The White Bonus: Five Famiies and the Cash Value of Racism in America (Henry Holt & Co.).

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Lise Olsen, Texas Observer

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An investigative project must be bullet-proof: legally sound and the findings supported with data, voluminous pages of public records, and dozens or hundreds of interviews corroborating information. Many of the key skills -- such as effective strategies for interviewing whistleblowers, what story tips and leads to follow or avoid, and overcoming hurdles with data or public records -- are learned over time by doing investigative reporting. One way early-career reporters can effectively pursue investigative projects while receiving mentorship and assistance is by working with reporters and editors who have done major projects. Panelists will describe how they did just that and what roles various collaborators can play in launching their own team investigations.

This session was planned in collaboration with AAJA-LA. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Denis Akbari, UC Berkeley

Julie Patel, Cal State

Eric Sagara, Big Local News

Anne To, ABC7

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As journalists we know how to conduct research and dig into stories - but rarely at a panel do we hear from experts in other fields that require investigative skills. This panel lets you get a sneak peek into how legal investigators, police investigators, and private investigators do their jobs. Get tips you can use for digging into any story, from the "other" investigators.

Speaker

Anna Wener, CBS News

Anna Werner is CBS News Senior Consumer Investigative Correspondent. In 2024, Werner won her second Polk Award and the Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism. She’s won three IRE awards, two duPont-Columbia awards, two Peabody awards, four SPJ awards, three Scripps-Howard awards, six Murrow awards, 35 Emmy awards, and been named ‘journalist of the year’ seven times. Previously, she was an investigative reporter at WISH, KHOU, KPIX, and CIR.

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Though there are 400,000 children in foster care, the child welfare system is something of a black box: Family and juvenile courts are closed the the public, legal documents are sealed, data on the wellbeing and whereabouts of foster kids is minimal at best, and families involved in the system are protected by privacy rules. Join to hear from two journalists who have overcome these constraints to produce revelatory investigations on the child welfare system. We'll talk about strategies for reporting (e.g. data and records that are public), trauma-informed interviewing, and framing stories in a way that both adds value and remains sensitive to those involved.

Speakers

Julia Lurie, Mother Jones

Julia Lurie is a senior reporter at Mother Jones writing about child welfare, mental health, and addiction. Her investigation of the warehousing of foster children in psychiatric hospitals won the 2024 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. She is a three-time finalist for the Livingston Award for young journalists and was a 2022 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. You can reach her at jlurie@motherjones.com.

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Karen de Sa, The Imprint

Karen de Sá is executive editor of The Imprint, a national nonprofit outlet covering child welfare and youth justice. She has worked as an investigative reporter covering these topics for the majority of her three-decade journalism career, including 18 years at The San Jose Mercury News and three years at The San Francisco Chronicle. Her award-winning stories have led to 10 state laws and numerous systemic reforms improving the lives of vulnerable children and families.

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In this panel, attendees will hear the methods journalists use to expose rightwing attacks on elections, school boards, the LGBTQ+ community, and more as part of a larger coordinated rightwing extremist movement to upend democracy and strip away Americans' fundamental rights.

Speakers

David Armiak, Center for Media and Democracy

Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times

Sergio Olmos, CalMatters

Emily Russell, North Country Public Radio

A.C. Thompson, ProPublica/FRONTLINE

A.C. Thompson is a reporter for ProPublica and the PBS series FRONTLINE. His journalism has helped to spur multiple Congressional investigations, major reforms at the New Orleans Police Department, and the prosecution of nine violent white supremacists.

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Naomi Martin, Boston Globe

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This session will delve into how to investigate health insurance companies and, specifically, the decisions behind denying coverage. We'll share tangible tools and a framework for reporting on this life-and-death industry.

Speakers

Laura Garcia, The Texas Tribune

Maya Miller, ProPublica

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Sheriffs are elected officials who often answer to no one but voters. Without effective oversights in place, journalists are sometimes the only watchdogs over sheriffs, who can rule their counties like kings. This panel will discuss the challenges and triumphs of reporting on sheriffs from Los Angeles to rural Mississippi.

Speakers

Keri Blakinger, Los Angeles Times

Keri Blakinger is a Los Angeles Times reporter covering the Sheriff's Department and county jails. Previously, she covered prisons for The Marshall Project and criminal justice for the Houston Chronicle. She is a two-time Pulitzer finalist and the author of Corrections in Ink.

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Ilyssa Daly, independent journalist

Brian Howey, The New York Times/Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting

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Hannah Critchfield, Tampa Bay Times

Hannah Critchfield is an investigative reporter at the Tampa Bay Times. She and her colleagues recently reported a series of overdose deaths due to kratom, a virtually unregulated herb that's often marketed as a safe way to treat anxiety, pain, or opioid withdrawal. The investigation has been cited by lawmakers across the country who have called for more stringent oversight over how the substance is manufactured and sold. She is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School.

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Ducks paddle furiously beneath the surface but appear at ease to onlookers above water. Journalists can do that, too. In this panel, we'll take you through the project process, from start to finish and discuss how to manage your reporting, manage your colleagues and manage your life.

Speakers

Donna Borak, NYU

Marisa Kwiatkowski, Freelance

Marisa Kwiatkowski is an investigative journalist. Her work has spurred multiagency investigations, criminal charges, resignations and changes to federal law and state policy. She and her IndyStar colleagues earned numerous awards for their investigation into USA Gymnastics’ handling of child sexual abuse allegations, including those against Larry Nassar. Marisa has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Grand Valley State University and an MBA from Indiana University.

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Divya Kumar, Tampa Bay Times

Sydney Sims, Capital B

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Nicole Carr, ProPublica

Kerwin Speight, The Poynter Institute

Kerwin Speight is the broadcast faculty member at The Poynter Institute. He's an award-winning television journalist who most recently led editorial strategy at REVOLT Black News. Before that, he was managing director of Spectrum News in Charlotte, North Carolina. Speight started his career as a producer and eventually led teams as an executive producer at several local stations.

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Julie Watts, CBS News California Investigates

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Western journalists can learn a lot from how peers in tough foreign press environments hold bad actors accountable – including the sheer inspiration of their example. Through interviews, networking, and Global Shining Light Award submissions, GIJN has gathered unique insights into the new methods reporters in developing and authoritarian nations are using to expose wrongdoing, while also keeping themselves and their sources safe. In this session, learn about the open source tools and collaboration models that make a difference in these places, as well as new methods that have driven projects – such as curated hacktivist databases in Belarus; visual forensics in Colombia, Google Pinpoint in South Africa; AI tools in Venezuela, elevated "fixer" roles in conflict zones; and a new censorship circumvention app in Iran.

Speakers

Daniil Bogdanovich, The Fix

Daniil is a founder of Black Book Belarus, a civic control tool that named over 3500 corrupt police officers, judges, and state officials related to the brutal breakdown and prosecutions of peaceful protesters in Belarus in 2020. Now Daniil works at The Fix Research and Advisory which helps media in challenging regions to be more sustainable and also develops media tech software aimed to ease the burden of independent media worldwide.

Maria Lilly Delgado, Huellas de Impunidad-Nicaragua

Faisal Karimi, John S. Knight Journalism Fellowship at Stanford University. Afghanistan Institute for Research and Media Studies

Faisal Karimi is an exiled media entrepreneur and senior journalist from Afghanistan. He is the founding director of Afghanistan Institute for Research and Media Studies and Afghanistan Women’s News Agency. Currently, Faisal is a John S. Knight Journalism fellow at Stanford. He worked as a media researcher at San Jose State University and Internews. Prior to the Taliban takeover, he was an assistant professor of journalism at his alma mater Herat University Afghanistan.

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Rowan Philp, Global Investigative Journalism Network

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