NICAR 2023 conference schedule

Any time

special

Pitch your ideas to MuckRock!

🕙 Any time

Description

Have a great investigative story idea that needs some outside help? Pitch your story to MuckRock! If selected, we'll work with you, to provide financial support, editing, data or FOIA help or some combination to get it published.

Simply fill out this form with your name, email, newsroom affiliation or freelance and a short, 500-word-max description of your idea. We'll reach out to journalists in March 2023 to talk about your ideas and will arrange Zoom meetings and in-person meet-ups at NICAR23 in Nashville.

Have a question? Email us at news@muckrock.com.

Speaker

Derek Kravitz, MuckRock 👇

Data and investigations editor Derek Kravitz works on MuckRock's accountability journalism projects with newsroom partners. Previously, he was the research director at ProPublica and a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press and The Washington Post. Kravitz is a two-time Livingston Award finalist and he has also been apart of three teams that have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. He can be reached at derek@muckrock.com.

On Twitter: @derekkravitz

Thursday, 3/2

Sessions starting at 7:30 a.m. CT

special

International meet and greet - invitation-only event

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 7:30 – 8:15 a.m. CT (45m)

🚪 Room: Music City Ballroom – Hotel Level 2

Description

An opportunity for international attendees to network. This is an invitation-only event.

🔊 Speaker details coming soon!

Sessions starting at 8:15 a.m. CT

panel

Welcome first timers! How to make the most of NICAR23

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 8:15 – 8:45 a.m. CT (30m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

Welcome to the conference! Hear from IRE staff about tips and tactics to navigate our conference like a pro. Also, you'll learn about key resources that IRE offers once you're back home.

Speakers

Diana Fuentes, IRE & NICAR 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Lauren Grandestaff, IRE & NICAR 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Cody Winchester, IRE & NICAR 👇

Cody was a newspaper reporter, data specialist and web developer before joining IRE as a training director in 2017. He became the organization's tech director in 2022.

Sessions starting at 9 a.m. CT

commons

The Marshall Project offers office hours

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 9 – 11:15 a.m. CT (135m)

🚪 Room: Edgehill – Meeting Space Level 2

Description

The Marshall Project’s team may not always be hiring, but we’re excited to offer up a number of slots for resume/portfolio review, mock interviews, data reviews, etc. Click here to sign up for a 25-minute conversation.

🔊 Speaker details coming soon!

demo

Tips and techniques for handling mass records requests to local agencies

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Public records

Description

Managing a FOIA request or local public record act request can be very different experiences. Local agencies may be less experienced in handling records or knowledgeable about the law. However, new tools can make it easier to make and manage requests to many places. This panel will share tools for making requests, negotiating with record managers and organizing files. We'll get into the nitty gritty of topics like NextRequest, transferring big files and arguing about definitions.

Speakers

Tom Meagher, The Marshall Project 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Lisa Pickoff-White, The California Reporting Project 👇

Lisa Pickoff-White is an award-winning investigative data reporter working with the California Reporting Project to turn use-of-force and police misconduct records into data and impactful reporting.

On Twitter: @pickoffwhite

hands-on

Finding the story: Using DNS search for investigative journalism

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 12 South 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

Description

Every online interaction begins with a lookup in the Domain Name System (DNS), the backbone of the Internet. As a result, there are digital footprints left behind in the DNS. With the demise of Whois, investigative reporters are looking for new tools to uncover these footprints. Learn how to use DNSDB Scout, a tool to query DNSDB, a historical passive DNS database, to discover previously unknown online connections and gain new information to advance your ongoing and breaking news investigations.

Basic knowledge of the Domain Name System (DNS) is helpful, but not required. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speakers

Kelly Molloy, DomainTools 👇

Kelly Molloy collects big data and teaches others how to use it. She has extensive experience creating and managing anti-abuse tools, from spamtraps to passive DNS to DNSBLs.

On Twitter: @kellymolloy

Daniel Schwalbe, Domain Tools 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

hands-on

Mapping and geographic data analysis with the simple features package in R

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Advanced

Description

The sf (Simple Features) package in R represents vector geodata as data frames with the geometry held in a single list-column. As such, it allows you to process geodata in pipelines that consistent with the syntax of dplyr and other tidyverse packages. This session will provide an introduction to the Simple Features in R package, show how to draw maps from sf objects with ggplot2, and how to run spatial queries on geodata much as you would in PostGIS.

This session is good for anyone who is comfortable working in R and the Tidyverse packages.

Speaker

Peter Aldhous, UC Berkeley Grad School 👇

Peter is a data, science, and investigative reporter based in San Francisco. He also teaches data visualization at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and investigative and policy reporting and data visualization in the Science Communication Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He runs training in data analysis and visualization for the Berkeley Advanced Media Institute.

On Twitter: @paldhous

hands-on

Google Sheets 1: Getting started with spreadsheets

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

In this introduction to spreadsheets, you'll begin analyzing data with Google Sheets, a simple but powerful tool. You'll learn how to enter data, navigate spreadsheets and conduct simple calculations like sum, average and median.

This session is good for: Data beginners.

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you will need a free Google account to participate.

Speaker

Shirsho Dasgupta, Miami Herald/McClatchy DC Bureau 👇

Shirsho Dasgupta is a data/investigative reporter with the Washington Bureau of the Miami Herald/McClatchy newspapers. He often uses Python, SQL and Excel in his work. He has won multiple awards for stories ranging from financial crime to Florida's prison system. He holds Master's degrees in both English and Journalism.

On Twitter: @ShirshoD

panel

Journalism workflow hacks & tips

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

Description

Have you ever wondered how other reporters do their job? In this panel, we’ll do a show-and-tell of different tactics reporters use to streamline their days. No war stories, just the nitty gritty of every-day reporting: filing information requests, talking to sources and researching. We'll also go into special occasions, like election coverage at a national scale.

Speakers

Geoff Hing, The Marshall Project 👇

Geoff Hing is a data reporter who has worked as part of investigative, data and news applications teams in a number of newsrooms. He has covered demographic change, prisons, voting rights and policing. He is interested in collaborative, multidisciplinary practice in journalism. Geoff lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where he enjoys DIY music, reading, trail running, mountain biking and visiting communities around the state.

On Twitter: @geoffhing

Amir Khafagy, Documented 👇

Amir Khafagy is an award-winning New York City-based journalist. He is currently a labor reporter with Documented as a Report for America corps member as well as a Type Investigations Ida B. Wells Fellow.

On Twitter: @AmirKhafagy91

Natalie Lung, Bloomberg News 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Cecilia Reyes, Insider 👇

Cecilia Reyes is a bilingual reporter on Insider's investigations team. Previously, Reyes worked at the Chicago Tribune. Her work on a series, "The Failures Before the Fires" exposed how government officials in Chicago were warned about safety issues in dozens of homes before fires killed 61 adults and children. This reporting was honored with a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting in 2022.

On Twitter: @kcecireyes

Mike Stucka, Independent journalist 👇

Mike Stucka (he/him) set a personal record of more than 1 million words in a month sent to editors, because computers let you do repetitive stuff quickly. He has worked for a few hundred newspapers, built interdependent data pipelines to the XKCD 2054 standard, and failed to become the person his dog thinks he is. He is now Florida Man.

On Twitter: @MikeStucka

panel

Teaching the teachers

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Educators

Description

Some of the most highly regarded data journalism teachers will share their tips, tricks and other best practices for teaching hands-on classes at the conference, in your newsroom, other venues or even college classes. The group will discuss their secrets for things such as preparing for a session, what expectations to have about your students, how to handle difficult situations in the class, and what to think about when choosing data for the lesson. They will also offer advice for those of you who have never taught at the conference on how best to break into the teaching ranks.

Speakers

Jasmine Han, Industry Dive 👇

Jasmine Ye Han is a data journalist and mom of two cats. She is currently a news graphics developer at Industry Dive. Previously, she worked for Bloomberg Industry Group, where she also served as a co-chair of AAPI employee resource group. She is an alum of the Missouri School of Journalism and she was a graduate assistant at NICAR data library in 2015 and 2016.

On Twitter: @JasmineHanYe

Jennifer LaFleur, Center for Public Integrity 👇

Jennifer LaFleur is a senior editor at The Center for Public Integrity. She joined CPI from the Investigative Reporting Workshop. She also teaches at American University.

On Twitter: @j_la28

Samantha Sunne, ProPublica/WVUE 👇

Samantha Sunne is a freelance journalist based in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is currently a ProPublica Local Reporting Fellow at WVUE, and she recently published her first book, “Data + Journalism: A Story-Driven Approach to Learning Data Reporting."

On Twitter: @samanthasunne

Ben Welsh, Reuters 👇

Ben Welsh is the News Application Editor at Reuters and a fellow at the DePaul University Center for Journalism Integrity & Excellence

On Twitter: @palewire

panel

Making sense of criminal justice data

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

Reporters who cover criminal justice are bound to encounter lots of numbers: Incarceration rates, crime rates, racial disparities, clearance rates, use of force statistics and so on. Unfortunately, making sense of these figures can be a minefield of potential misinterpretations thanks to antiquated data collection programs, intentional manipulation by law enforcement agencies, and the politically charged nature of the topic. This panel will introduce reporters to common pitfalls, best practices for presenting information to readers, and tools for identifying unreliable statistics. This panel could be in-person and/or virtual.

Speakers

Ethan Corey, The Appeal 👇

Ethan Corey is the research and projects editor for The Appeal, a nonprofit newsroom that covers the criminal justice system.

On Twitter: @EthanSCorey

Weihua Li, The Marshall Project 👇

Weihua Li is a data reporter at The Marshall Project, where she uses data reporting to tell stories about the criminal justice system. She loves liberating data from terrible government websites, poking holes in crime data, and hanging out with her toddler.

On Twitter: @Weihua_Li1

Cheryl Phillips, Big Local News 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

panel

Accessing public records in Tennessee

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 9 – 11:15 a.m. CT (135m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Public records

Description

Join attorneys from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press for a deep-dive into how to access public records in Tennessee that can inform your reporting. You’ll come away from this session with a better understanding of the state’s open records law, how to use the federal Freedom of Information Act to obtain state-specific information, strategies for navigating records denials, and practical tips you can apply when drafting your requests and engaging with records custodians.

This session was planned in collabration with Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Adam Marshall, RCFP 👇

Adam A. Marshall is a senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. His work includes litigation in federal and state courts and training journalists on government transparency. On Mastadon: @a_marshall_plan@mastodon.social

On Twitter: @a_marshall_plan

Paul McAdoo, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

pre-registration - hands-on

Let's make mapping better!

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 1 – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $40 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

More and more, newsrooms embrace mapping and spatial analysis as ways to highlight patterns and trends in data — and more and more, we might find ourselves frustrated in working with and visualizing geographic data. In this session, we'll discuss some ways that mapping falls short and ways we can improve it, and we'll get hands-on experience optimizing the mapping process in order to make it more collaborative, cohesive and repeatable. We will share our own tips, tricks and tools as well as encourage feedback from attendees so we can all take something new back to our own newsrooms!

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Laptops will be provided.

Speakers

Alexandra Kanik, Houston Chronicle / San Antonio Express-News 👇

Alexandra Kanik is the data visualization editor for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. Previously, she worked as a data journalist for Louisville Public Media and PublicSource.

On Twitter: @act_rational

Cam Rodriguez, Chalkbeat 👇

Cam Rodriguez is a data + graphics reporter at Chalkbeat. In the past, she's been a Dow Jones intern at USA TODAY, a 2020 elections fellow at the Detroit Free Press and she chased down historical oddities with WTTW/Chicago PBS, in addition to freelancing with Voice of San Diego and South Side Weekly. A recent grad-school grad, Cam was also managing editor at 14 East, DePaul University's award-winning online student magazine based in Chicago.

On Twitter: @journo_cam

pre-registration - hands-on

Mastering Google Sheets: Web scraping, running scripts and other tricks

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $40 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

Google Sheets is more than just free spreadsheet software to organize and store data. This hands-on session will start with pivot tables and conditional formatting, and through examples, we'll also learn how to scrape data in seconds without code, automate menial tasks with macros, write custom spreadsheet formulas as well as how to send emails, geocode addresses, translate text and more – all through the power of Google Sheets. Come with a laptop and leave with the knowledge of a Google Sheets power user.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to this training and have a Google account.

Workshop prerequisites: You should be familiar with using spreadsheets and formulas.

Speaker

Frank Bi, The Star Tribune 👇

Frank Bi is a senior journalist, technologist, educator and nonprofit leader passionate about the intersection of media and technology. He is the Director of Tools and Technology at the Star Tribune and the Senior Vice President of the Asian American Journalists Association.

On Twitter: @frankbi

pre-registration - hands-on

Introduction to web development

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 9 a.m. – 5:45 p.m. CT (420m)

🚪 Room: Sylvan Park – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $75 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

This daylong crash course for beginners will give you the confidence you need to start building things for the web. You'll start from scratch and learn about HTML, CSS and JavaScript, then dive into some more advanced tools used by modern web developers around the world. Along the way, you'll learn about how and where to host your creations, the importance of accessibility-first development and other key topics.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Laptops will be provided for the training.

Workshop prerequisites: Some experience working with data in general. Knowledge of web development concepts is helpful but not required.

Speakers

Carla Astudillo, The Texas Tribune 👇

Carla Astudillo is a senior data visuals developer with a focus on elections and political data at The Texas Tribune. Previously, she was a data and interactive visuals journalist at NJ.com and The Star-Ledger in New Jersey.

On Twitter: @carla_astudi

Andrew Briz, POLITICO 👇

Andrew Briz is the Editorial Director of Newsroom Engineering at POLITICO where he leads a small team of developers to create tools and products that advance the newsroom’s storytelling capabilities. Since starting as a developer, he has engineered award-winning products like The 2020 Election Night Experience and Congress Minutes. When not coding, you can find Andrew jamming to K-Pop or creating an enthralling conquest for his Dungeons and Dragons group to encounter.

On Twitter: @brizandrew

Naël Shiab, CBC 👇

Naël Shiab is the senior data producer for CBC/Radio-Canada. He uses his programming skills to answer questions of public interest with data. He loves to create digital interactive experiences, especially immersive 3D dataviz. Naël is also the creator and maintainer of the open-source library simple-data-analysis (github.com/nshiab/simple-data-analysis). For more, including his portfolio, visit naelshiab.com.

On Twitter: @NaelShiab

Sessions starting at 10:15 a.m. CT

hands-on

Excel: Basic stats

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

You don't need a special statistics program to run simple statistical analysis. In this session, you'll learn how to compute some basic statistics in Excel and figure out what they mean.

This session is good for: People who already are comfortable with using functions in Excel.

Speaker

Todd Wallack, WBUR 👇

Darla Cameron is the managing editor for visual journalism for The Texas Tribune. She works with multidisciplinary teams to elevate the visual storytelling and reach audiences across Texas.

On Twitter: @twallack

hands-on

R: Making fancieR graphics

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 12 South 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Advanced

Description

Come check out some new packages created by members of the R community that may inspire you to try out some new exploratory data viz techniques with R. Creating small multiples for regions in a spatially meaningful way. Easy text annotations for exploratory charts. Animated data viz GIFs for social media. Fancy bivariate choropleth maps! Turn your headshot into a ridgeplot. Disclaimer: “fancier” doesn’t necessarily mean useful.

This session is good for anyone who is comfortable working in R, and some experience with ggplot2 is helpful. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Andrew Ba Tran, Washington Post 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

hands-on

Google Sheets 2: Formulas & sorting

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

Much of Google Sheets' power comes in the form of formulas. In this class, you'll learn how to use them to analyze data with the eye of a journalist. Yes, math will be involved, but it's totally worth it! This class will show you how calculations like change, percent change, rates and ratios can beef up your reporting.

This session is good for: Anyone who has taken Google Sheets 1 or has been introduced to spreadsheets.

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you will need a free Google account to participate.

Speaker

Tisha Thompson, ESPN 👇

Tisha Thompson is an investigative reporter for ESPN, appearing on all domestic and international platforms, including (but not limited to) espn.com, SportsCenter, OTL, E60, SCFeatures, ESPN Deportes, ESPNW and The Daily podcast. She's a second-generation member of IRE and has been coming to NICAR conferences for more than 20 years.

On Twitter: @TishaESPN

panel

Fireside chat with Meredith Broussard

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

Join Meredith Broussard and Aron Pilhofer, two longtime NICARians, discuss Broussard's forthcoming book "More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech."

Broussard, a data scientist and one of the few Black female researchers in artificial intelligence, masterfully synthesizes concepts from computer science and sociology. In her book, she explores a range of examples: from facial recognition technology trained only to recognize lighter skin tones, to mortgage-approval algorithms that encourage discriminatory lending, to the dangerous feedback loops that arise when medical diagnostic algorithms are trained on insufficiently diverse data. Even when such technologies are designed with good intentions, Broussard shows, fallible humans develop programs that can result in devastating consequences.

🔊 Speaker details coming soon!

panel

Encryption and journalism: From idea to publication

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Security

Description

Many factors come into play when considering the security of a story. The most notable is the security around conversations with sources. While this is important, this is not the only point in the process to consider the security of your interactions and information. In this training, we will overview the different types of encryption and how it comes into play when researching, writing, and communicating new stories. Attendees will walk away from this training understanding how to make informed decisions about the security of their tools and process from research to publication of a story.

The Security Track is sponsored by The Paranoids. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speaker

Kristen Larson, Yahoo 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

panel

Come learn about the Data-Driven Reporting Project

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

The Data-Driven Reporting Project was founded to support newsrooms who might otherwise lack the tools, training or capacity to do more technically-focused investigative reporting. These are often smaller newsrooms with fewer resources. In June 2022 the DDRP announced 22 newsrooms will receive a financial award and additional support in trainings, mentorship, and access to technology to develop local data and document-based investigative projects. Come to this session to hear critical lessons learned from three published projects. Attendees will be able to understand the impact of these projects and learn how can others can get motivated to work on document/data-powered investigations.

Speakers

Karina Brown, Underscore News 👇

As managing editor, Karina guides Underscore’s mission to illuminate the strength and vibrancy of Indigenous communities as well as the challenges they face. Starting out in journalism in 2005, she has reported in a wide variety of places, from the chaos of far-right extremist rallies to the hushed decorum of federal courtrooms, and she has focused on environmental issues, policing and tribal sovereignty.

On Twitter: @karinapdx

Pam Dempsey, Northwestern | Data-Driven Reporting Project 👇

Pam Dempsey is the program director for the Data-Driven Reporting Project at Northwestern | Medill and past executive director of Investigate Midwest. She also has helped coordinate the start-up of two online newsrooms that heavily emphasize data journalism.

On Twitter: @pamelagdempsey

Emilie Munson, Albany Times Union 👇

Emilie Munson specializes in investigations using data analysis and public records. She is currently a data reporter for the Albany Times Union. In the past, she served as a Washington correspondent for the Times Union and Hearst Connecticut Media covering Congress and the president. She’s also worked as a state politics reporter and education reporter in Connecticut.

On Twitter: @emiliemunson

Inori Roy, The Local 👇

Inori Roy is a Toronto-based feature writer and associate editor at The Local magazine. She specializes in data-driven investigations exposing inequities, particularly across race, class and geographic lines, and driven by policy choices. Her work has previously appeared in the Toronto Star, environmental outlets Unearthed and The Narwhal, and the CBC.

On Twitter: @royinori

Stephannie Stokes, WABE, Atlanta's NPR affiliate 👇

Stephannie Stokes is a journalist covering housing and inequality at the Atlanta NPR affiliate, WABE 90.1 FM. In her investigations, she’s revealed how predatory investors strip wealth from Black homeowners in Atlanta’s fast-appreciating neighborhoods, and she’s spent a year following tenants in a federally-subsidized housing complex with some of the worst conditions in the city. This past year, she joined the inaugural class of Data-Driven Reporting Project awardees.

On Twitter: @stephannnnie

panel

Covering disparities in higher education with data

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Equity & inclusion

📝 Description coming soon!

Speakers

Sarah Butrymowicz, The Hechinger Report 👇

Sarah Butrymowicz is senior editor for investigations at the Hechinger Report. Prior to assuming that role, she spent four years as a staff writer covering K-12 and higher education and two years as Hechinger's data editor. Her work has appeared in dozens of outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and NBC News, and she has been honored by several journalism awards.

On Twitter: @sarahbutro

Andrea Fuller, The Wall Street Journal 👇

Andrea Fuller is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York who specializes in data analysis. She uses spreadsheets, databases, and computer code to find stories. Andrea joined the Journal in 2014. She previously was a data journalist at Gannett Digital, the Center for Public Integrity and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

On Twitter: @anfuller

Meredith Kolodner, The Hechinger Report 👇

Meredith Kolodner writes investigative articles and produces data analyses for higher education and K-12 stories at The Hechinger Report. She previously covered schools for the New York Daily News and was an editor at Inside Schools and The Investigative Fund, now called Type Investigations. Her work has appeared in local and national news outlets, including NBC News, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

On Twitter: @merkolodner

Sessions starting at 11:30 a.m. CT

commons

Defining and measuring the success of your published work

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Edgehill – Meeting Space Level 2

Description

How can you know if your work is reaching its intended audience, having an impact, or helping your company make money? Let's talk about the different types of analytics that newsrooms are using to quantify their investigative work.

Speaker

Julia Haslanger, The Philadelphia Inquirer 👇

Julia Haslanger is the newsroom analytics lead for The Philadelphia Inquirer. She's previously worked for Hearken and WSJ in roles related to engaging audiences with journalism. She currently lives in Chicago.

On Twitter: @JuliaJRH

demo

Under pressure: Real life in real time with breaking news

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

It’s become one of the hottest sessions at every IRE Conference. How would you and your newsroom fare in digging out little-known facts and information under the pressure of a breaking news deadline? One of the best ways to get better is to practice.

This is a real-life scenario where you can learn to break news without leaving your computer. The skills learned in this session can also be used for turning daily general assignment stories when there’s not breaking news. This session regularly fills up and the tipsheet that comes with it is in high demand. If you’re interested, get there early to get a seat.

No data experience is necessary for this class. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Stephen Stock, CBS News and Stations 👇

Stephen Stock serves as national investigative correspondent for CBS News and Stations. Prior to joining CBS News, Stephen was a founding member of NBC Bay Area’s 15-member investigative unit. He also helped build investigative teams in Miami and Orlando. He teaches not only at IRE but at universities around the country. He’s won just about every broadcast journalism award including a Peabody, du-Pont, national SPJ, three Murrow, six Assoicated Press awards and 18 regional Emmys.

On Twitter: @stephenstocktv

demo

Use our data!

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Collaboration

Description

On this panel, you’ll hear from three organizations that are publishing datasets you can use for investigative work, quick scoops, and community reporting. Come hear about NINA/CLIP, The Data Liberation Project, and The Accountability Project from NICAR-ians central to these efforts. You’ll learn what datasets they’ve made available, how to use them, and how to get involved.

Speakers

Aarushi Sahejpal, Investigative Reporting Workshop / American University School of Communication Faculty 👇

Aarushi Sahejpal is data editor at the Investigative Reporting Workshop and an adjunct professor of quantitative methods and data journalism at American University's School of Communication.

On Twitter: @aarushisahejpal

Jeremy Singer-Vine, The Data Liberation Project 👇

Jeremy Singer-Vine runs the Data Liberation Project and writes Data Is Plural, a weekly newsletter.

Mago Torres, OpenNews 👇

Torres is an investigative journalist and data editor specializing in research and project leadership. She has been part of OpenNews as Research Project Director and, until recently, was the data editor at the Latin American Center for Investigative Reporting. Torres was part of the ICIJ’s investigations Pandora Papers, FinCEN Files, Luanda Leaks, and the Pulitzer prize-winning Panama Papers. She is a proud JSK Fellow Alumni, and she has a Ph.D. in Humanistic Studies.

On Twitter: @magiccia

demo

Data and digital tools for your newsroom and classroom

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Educators

Description

Mike Reilley, founder of JournalistsToolbox.org and co-author of "Data + Journalism" will guide you through the latest and greatest data and digital tools (most of them free!) that you can incorporate into your workflow right now! Come armed with a laptop and smartphone. Participants get a handout with links to tools, examples, tips, tricks and more.

Speaker

Mike Reilly, University of Illinois Chicago | Journalist's Toolbox 👇

Mike is the founder and editor of JournalistsToolbox.org, and he is a newsroom trainer who has taught 12,000 journalists and educators in 41 states over the past seven years. He has taught data journalism full-time at the University of Illinois-Chicago for six years. A former reporter at the Los Angeles Times and web editor at the Chicago Tribune, Mike served for 13 years as a faculty member at Northwestern, Arizona State University and DePaul University.

On Twitter: @journtoolbox

hands-on

A new data tool for identifying where people are losing their homes

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 12 South 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Advanced

🚂️ Track: Equity & inclusion

Description

Millions of Americans are evicted each year, yet it's surprisingly difficult to know who is being evicted, where and why, because local data on evictions is either non-existent or difficult to analyze. By bringing together a repository of eviction data and a tool that allows you to analyze it, attendees of this session will be able to generate data-driven insights about housing insecurity in their communities.

New America’s Future of Land and Housing Program, DataKind and Eviction Lab will showcase the Foreclosure and Eviction Analysis Tool (FEAT)--an open-source data tool to help people understand where housing loss is most acute (at the census tract level), when during the year housing loss rises and falls, and who is most impacted (based on 65+ demographic variables). We will demonstrate how to use the tool using data from Eviction Lab's Eviction Tracking System (ETS), which provides regularly-updated eviction filing data for 7 states and 31 cities.

This class is good for: This class is good for Intermediate users. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speakers

Caitlin Augustin, DataKind 👇

Caitlin Augustin is DataKind's Vice President, Product and Programs. In this role, Caitlin is responsible for delivering DataKind's core offerings, ensuring that high quality, impactful data science interventions are created in partnership with social sector leaders. Prior to DataKind, Caitlin worked as a research scientist at a digital education company and as an engineering professor at NYU. Caitlin holds a BSIE and a PhD from the University of Miami.

On Twitter: @augustincaitlin

Juan Pablo Garnham, Eviction Lab 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Sabiha Zainulbhai, New America 👇

Sabiha Zainulbhai joined New America's Future of Land and Housing program as a senior policy analyst in January 2021. Zainulbhai's work focuses on ensuring that housing and land use policy in the U.S. advances racial and economic justice. Zainulbhai holds a master of public policy degree from the Gerald R. Ford School at the University of Michigan and a BA from the George Washington University.

On Twitter: @FLHatNewAmerica

hands-on

Bringing data journalism to the sports section

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

Sports is absolutely drowning in data and there is a large and hungry audience for sports content. Alongside that, there's a large and growing open-source sports analytics community that data journalists should be a part of. In this hands on class, speakers will take you through examples of ways to use traditonal data journalism tools like R and the Tidyverse to bring in up-to-the-moment sports data and do sophisticated analysis that you can immediately visualize to add context to seasons, leagues and sports.

Speakers

Matt Waite, University of Nebraska-Lincoln 👇

Matt Waite is a journalism professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who teaches courses in data analysis and visualization. In 2011, he founded the Drone Journalism Lab, where he and his students have used drones to report news in six countries. From 2007-2011, he was a programmer/journalist for the St. Petersburg Times where he developed the Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact. Before that, he was an award-winning investigative reporter for the Times.

On Twitter: @mattwaite

Derek Willis, University of Maryland 👇

Derek is a lecturer in data and computational journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and co-founder of OpenElections. He is an IRE member since 1995 and alumnus of lots of great news organizations.

On Twitter: @derekwillis

hands-on

Google Sheets 3: Filtering & pivot tables

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

A look at the awesome power of pivot — and how to use it to analyze your dataset in minutes rather than hours. We'll work up to using a pivot table by first sorting and filtering a dataset, learning how to find story ideas along the way.

This session is good for: Anyone familiar with formulas, sorting and filtering in a spreadsheet program.

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you will need a free Google account to participate.

Speaker

Matt Dempsey, Spotlight PA 👇

Matt Dempsey is the interim investigations editor at Spotlight PA. He previously led teams at USAFacts and the Houston Chronicle. His "Chemical Breakdown" series won the 2016 IRE Innovation award and the National Press Foundation’s “Feddie” award. His work was a key part of the Houston Chronicle’s Pulitzer Prize finalist entry for Breaking News.

On Twitter: @mizzousundevil

panel

Investigative reporting for everyone WITH DATA: A quick-start guide

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Equity & inclusion

Description

Want to hit consistent home runs? Here’s how to punch way above your job title or shore up your existing reporting practice with tighter organization and careful data analysis. We’ll talk instant-impact, intro-level tips for new reporters and advanced-level tools for seasoned pros (hello, Gantt charts).

Speakers

Alexandra Chaidez, NBC News 👇

Alexandra (Alex) Chaidez is a researcher with NBC's Investigative Unit, where she reports and produces stories for television and NBC's website. She started at NBC as a news associate with Investigations and MSNBC. She has held internships with the Boston Globe, Block Club Chicago, NBC Boston, and CBS News. A Chicago native, she graduated from Harvard College with a degree in History & Literature in 2021.

On Twitter: @a_achaidez

Andrew Ford, The Arizona Republic 👇

Andrew Ford is an investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic. He recently published a narrative investigation on a chain of clinics that was quoted by the U.S. Department of Justice in a complaint against the company. Learn more at www.AndrewFordNews.com, @AndrewFordNews. Ford is happy to take questions and partner on stories: aford@arizonarepublic.com.

On Twitter: @AndrewFordNews

José Martinez, The Connecticut Mirror 👇

José is a data reporter at the Connecticut Mirror. Before that, he spent a summer with The Wall Street Journal as an investigative data intern and held internships or fellowships with Texas Tribune, American Public Media Group, ProPublica, Bloomberg and the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. Born in El Salvador and raised in Houston, he graduated from the University of Texas with degree in journalism.

On Twitter: @dv7jose

Simone Weichselbaum, NBC News Investigations 👇

Simone Weichselbaum is a national investigative reporter for NBC News, focusing on local and federal law enforcement issues. She previously was a police reporter for The Marshall Project, the New York Daily News and the Philadelphia Daily News. She holds a graduate degree in criminology from the University of Pennsylvania.

On Twitter: @SimoneJWei

panel

It’s freezing! Investigating the climate crisis

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

The climate crisis is the most defining and crucial issue of the contemporary age. As such, it is also one of the biggest challenges for journalists all over the world. The aim of this workshop is to show best practices and some of the best recent investigative work in this area.

Speakers

Elfredah Kevin-Alerechi, Freelancer 👇

Elfredah Kevin-Alerechi is a Nigerian freelance multimedia investigative journalist based in London. She has a keen interest in environmental and climate reports. A fact-checker. A member of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network of the Reuters Institute of Journalism. She has spearheaded and led several investigations on environmental and climate issues in Europe and West Africa. Her work has been supported by Journalismfund.eu, The Pulitzer Centre, etc.

On Twitter: @ElfredahKevin

Andy Lehren, City University New York 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Niall Sargent, Noteworthy 👇

Niall Sargent is an award-winning multimedia investigative reporter with Noteworthy, a community-led investigative journalism platform in Ireland, where he is focused on issues related to climate change, biodiversity, and ecosystem services. He holds an MA in Investigative Journalism from City University London and a Diploma in Online Journalism from Goldsmiths University in London.

On Twitter: @niall_sargent

Sessions starting at 2:15 p.m. CT

demo

Data for redistricting and election coverage

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

The nonpartisan Redistricting Data Hub was founded to support civil rights and good government groups organizing around redistricting. But the data has been used more broadly, including for in-depth coverage and analysis of redistricting, as well as related work on elections and democracy. In this session, you'll see how news organizations are already using our data to cover important stories, and learn how you can use our free data and resources in your own work. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Kate Donovan, Redistricting Data Hub 👇

Kate Donovan is the support lead at the Redistricting Data Hub (RDH). In addition to providing managerial and administrative assistance at the RDH, she conducts research, creates resources and articles for the website and answers questions about data and redistricting through the help desk. She was previously an associate professor of political science and statistics at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.

hands-on

QGIS 1: Mapmaking for beginners

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Learn to how to make your own maps using free, open-source software called QGIS. This class will teach you how to get started importing and displaying geographic data. Not all datasets need to be mapped, but some do! We'll go over how to find publicly available data, prepare it for mapping, and join together different datasets.

This session is good for: Beginners looking to learn the basics of visualizing geographic data.

Speakers

Christine Jeavens, BBC News 👇

Christine Jeavans is a Senior Data Journalist at BBC News with a focus on health inequalities, social issues and politics. Recent projects include covering the U.S. midterms, Covid's links to deprivation and the award-winning NHS Tracker.

On Twitter: @chrisjeavans

Libby Rogers, BBC News 👇

Libby is a data scientist with BBC News. Recent projects include uncovering the extent of the NHS dentistry shortage in the UK, heat hazards and the latest NHS winter tracker. Libby also supports the BBC data journalism team technically with training and developing reusable tools and processes.

panel

Litigating FOIA denials

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Public records

Description

FOIA backlogs and denials are common obstacles to reporting. Join this session to hear how panelists have litigated countless FOIA cases they'll discuss how to use litigation to break through the roadblocks.

Speakers

Jason Leopold, Bloomberg News 👇

Jason Leopold is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg News. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Leopold's FOIA work has been profiled in dozens of media outlets, including a front-page story in the NYT. TRAC identified Leopold as "the most active individual FOIA litigator in the United States today." In 2016, he was awarded the FOI award from IRE and was inducted into the National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame by Freedom Forum Institute.

On Twitter: @JasonLeopold

Matt Topic, Loevy & Loevy 👇

Matt Topic is a media and transparency attorney. He has litigated hundreds of state and federal FOIA cases on behalf of journalists and others.

On Twitter: @mvtopic

panel

Don’t play (stupid) troll games: OpSec for public events ... like NICAR

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Security

Description

How do we stay engaged with our sources, readers, colleagues and the industry when so many bad faith groups are attempting to poison the well with false leads, subversive tactics, and outright trolling? We’ll discuss the types of actors in this space, how they operate, and how to keep your cool when someone is shoving a microphone in your face and peppering you with questions.

The Security Track is sponsored by The Paranoids. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speaker

Sara Rafsky, The New York Times 👇

Sara Rafsky is The New York Times’s Safety and Security Fellow. Previously, she was a researcher at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Committee to Protect Journalists, MIT Open Documentary Lab and Amnesty International. Sara was Doc Society’s Safe + Secure Executive and a producer of the Netflix documentary, "The Three Deaths of Marisela Escobedo." She was a Google News Lab Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow and has an MS in Comparative Media Studies from MIT.

On Twitter: @sararafsky

panel

Editing the data-driven investigation

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

Managing a data project presents challenges for any editor. No matter your comfort level with data, this panel will give you the foundation you need to help make sure your reporters aren’t running with scissors or spinning their wheels on data projects.

Speakers

Dianna Hunt, ICT (formerly Indian Country Today) 👇

Dianna Hunt, senior editor at ICT (formerly Indian Country Today) is a longtime editor and investigative reporter at the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and other news organizations. As the Chronicle’s metro editor, she directed and edited the Pulitzer Prize-finalist breaking news coverage of Hurricane Harvey. She served three terms on IRE’s board. Current boards: Fund for Investigative Journalism and Investigative Editing Corps.

On Twitter: @DiannaHunt

Jennifer LaFleur, Center for Public Integrity 👇

Jennifer LaFleur is a senior editor at The Center for Public Integrity. She joined CPI from the Investigative Reporting Workshop. She also teaches at American University.

On Twitter: @j_la28

Andy Lehren, City University New York 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

panel

How much does school spending matter for outcomes in education?

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

In 2019, government spending on K-12 public schools was the highest it’s been since 2008. But what kind of impact do those dollars have on education outcomes like reading and math proficiency?

Thanks to new data mandated by the feds and collected by Edunomics, it's possible to find the answers.

Learn more from top education reporters and analysts on how to translate this into stories for your community.

Speakers

Sara Chernikoff, USAFacts 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Matt Dempsey, Spotlight PA 👇

On Twitter: @mizzousundevil

Ash Dhammani, Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University 👇

Ash Dhammani is a Policy Data Analyst at Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, where he leads the school-level expenditure data collection, standardization and publication efforts. Ash’s research focuses on fiscal data transparency through database development and custom & practical visualizations. He wishes to make education finance data more accessible, eventually contributing to improvements in educational productivity and equity at-large.

On Twitter: @edunomicslab

pre-registration - hands-on

Introduction to Python for data analysis

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 2:15 – 5:45 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 1 – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $40 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Caitlin McGlade and Sahana Jayaraman will guide you through using Python to find stories in data. We will use Jupyter Notebooks to execute commands, a popular opensource tool commonly used to explore data tables and organize code.

You’ll learn:

- How to pull data from both a CSV saved locally on your computer and directly from a website

- How to find “the most” or “the least” by sorting

- How to isolate or exclude variables with filtering

- How to compare variables with groupbys

- How to merge datasets

This session would be good for people who have crunched numbers in Excel, or understand the concept of filtering, sorting and pivot tables /groupbys through other programs, and want to start analyzing data with Python so their work is more easily reproducible. Also for those who have tried a little Python before and couldn’t get the hang of it but want to keep trying.

Speakers

Sahana Jayaraman, The Arizona Republic 👇

Sahana Jayaraman is an investigative data reporter for the Arizona Republic. She writes and codes, using R and Python to collect, analyze and present data that helps tell human stories.

On Twitter: @SahanaJayaraman

Caitlin McGlade, Arizona Republic 👇

Caitlin is a data reporter on the Arizona Republic's investigative team, where she has primarily covered senior care failures, environmental problems and elections. She also teaches data journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.

On Twitter: @caitmcglade

pre-registration - hands-on

Mastering Google Sheets: Web scraping, running scripts and other tricks (repeat)

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 2:15 – 5:45 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $40 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to this training and have a Google account.

Workshop prerequisites: You should be familiar with using spreadsheets and formulas.

Speaker

Frank Bi, The Star Tribune 👇

On Twitter: @frankbi

pre-registration - hands-on

Introduction to R

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 2:15 – 5:45 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $40 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

We'll introduce you to R, a free, powerful open-source programming language that will take your data reporting to the next level. By the end of this three-hour session, you will be able to read data from common file types into R, clean and explore it, create visualizations, and make your entire data workflow reproduceable. We'll also talk about how to find help when you're stuck.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop for the training and have R and RStudio installed.

Workshop prerequisites: This session will be most helpful if you’re comfortable working with data and you’re ready to take your skills to the next level.

Speakers

Stephanie Lamm, The Atlanta Journal Constitution 👇

Stephanie Lamm is a data reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She uses data analysis tools such as SQL, R, and Python to uncover stories that would otherwise remain hidden. She previously worked for the Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle. She interned for the AJC in the summer of 2017. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

On Twitter: @stephanierlamm

Charles Minshew, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 👇

Charles Minshew leads the digital storytelling team (data and presentation) at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. At the AJC, he works with reporters to elevate both their data journalism and digital storytelling efforts. He was previously on the IRE staff from 2017 until 2022. Favorite coding language: R.

On Twitter: @CharlesMinshew

pre-registration - hands-on

First Observable Notebook: Prototyping with polish

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 2:15 – 5:45 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: 12 South 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $40 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

This three-hour, hands-on course will show you how journalists are putting Observable’s powerful potential to work. Using nothing but your web browser, you will sketch, refine, and publish interactive graphics and data analysis notebooks like those created by The Marshall Project and Los Angeles Times. Along the way, you’ll see how Observable’s groundbreaking approach to coding can help you be more creative, ambitious, efficient, and collaborative. You will learn how to rapidly explore a dataset and share insights and data visualizations with JavaScript, Observable Plot and an interactive Observable notebook. Preregistration is required and seating is limited. You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you'll need a free Observable account: observablehq.com.

Workshop prerequisites: Beginner to intermediate experience with Javascript, with basic knowledge of other web technologies like HTML, CSS, and SVGs. As long as you have a web browser, a working attitude, and willingness to ask for help, you’ll be golden!

Speakers

David Eads, The Marshall Project 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Alex Garcia, Independent Journalist 👇

Alex Garcia is a freelance software engineer from Los Angeles. He builds data visualizations, data pipelines, and news applications for data visualization agencies, startups, and newsrooms. He has several open source projects and has great interest in SQLite extensions, Observable notebooks, and command line tools.

On Twitter: @agarcia_me

Weihua Li, The Marshall Project 👇

On Twitter: @Weihua_Li1

Ilica Mahajan, The Marshall Project 👇

Ilica Mahajan is a computational journalist at The Marshall Project. She is a recovering software engineer who specializes in applying data science and distributed computing techniques to unlock the complexities of the criminal justice system. Most recently, she's been working with the fantastic crew of the Cleveland "Testify" project, scraping and analyzing thousands of court records to glean insights into Cuyahoga County's court system.

On Twitter: @IlicaMahajan

Sessions starting at 3:30 p.m. CT

demo

Tools for teaching R

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Educators

Description

If you're a professor or someone teaching a class in using R for journalism, there's two tools that make getting materials to students super easy: Quarto and LearnR. Quarto is a publishing system where you can write your own textbook and publish it (or, you know, fork ours and make it your own!). LearnR let's you create interactive code tutorials so students can learn in an interactive environment with live feedback. The great news: After some simple setup they're pretty easy to use, and with GitHub, you can host them for free. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speakers

Matt Waite, University of Nebraska-Lincoln 👇

On Twitter: @mattwaite

Derek Willis, University of Maryland 👇

On Twitter: @derekwillis

demo

Using DocumentCloud & DocumentCloud AddOns

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

In five minutes, you can create an automated, 24/7 digital watchdog that alerts you if a government agency ever posts documents mentioning keywords you care about. With a little more time, you can create workflows that turn those documents into cleaned-up datasets piped right into your inbox or even self-updating visualizations that highlight key trends. Earlier this year, DocumentCloud launched Add-Ons, our new extension system that gives users access to a wide range of machine learning, data extractions, and automation, all within the familiar DocumentCloud interface. Learn how to tap into these new capabilities with a wide range of practical examples and useful tricks that everyone can take back to their beat, with no programming skills required.

Speaker

Sanjin Ibrahimovic, MuckRock 👇

Sanjin is the Open Source Fellow at MuckRock, working primarily on DocumentCloud, DocumentCloud Add-Ons, and assisting newsrooms and users all across the world with their technical projects related to DocumentCloud, data extraction, web scraping, document archiving, and publishing.

hands-on

QGIS 2: Analyzing geographic data

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Build on your existing knowledge of QGIS and learn how to explore, manipulate and analyze geographic datasets to gain new insights.

This session is good for: Those who attended the QGIS I workshop or already know the basics of visualizing geographic data in QGIS.

Speakers

Christine Jeavens, BBC News 👇

On Twitter: @chrisjeavans

Libby Rogers, BBC News 👇

networking

Networking: LGBTQ+ journalists

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Edgehill – Meeting Space Level 2

🚂️ Track: Networking

Description

Mix and mingle, meet friends old and new, and build your professional community in this fun and informal networking session.

This session is for anyone who identifies as part of the LGBTQIA+ community or as an ally.

Speakers

Josh Hinkle, KXAN/St. Edward's University 👇

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. Josh teaches broadcast journalism at St. Edward’s University in Austin. In 2021, he was elected to the IRE Board of Directors.

On Twitter: @hinklej

Adam Rhodes, IRE & NICAR 👇

Adam M. Rhodes is a first-generation Cuban American journalist whose work primarily focuses on queer people and the criminal legal system. Their recent work has examined HIV treatment access in Puerto Rico, HIV criminalization in Illinois, and a homophobic capital murder trial in the state. Rhodes was most recently a staff writer and social justice reporter at the Chicago Reader, and they have been published in outlets including BuzzFeed News and The Washington Post.

On Twitter: @byadamrhodes

panel

Common digital attacks targeting journalists

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Security

Description

From the Pegasus spyware targeting individual journalists to ransomware attacks taking down publishing plants, many different kinds of tools and tactics are leveraged in attacks against news media. Preparing for such attacks can feel overwhelming and result in unsustainable or ineffective security practices. The purpose of this talk is to talk through common tactics used to target journalists, threat modeling exercises to understand what you should actually care about preparing for, and practical, sustainable security measures journalists can take to protect themselves.

The Security Track is sponsored by The Paranoids. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speaker

Neena Kapur, The New York Times 👇

Neena Kapur is the director of information security at The New York Times, and leads teams across threat intelligence, security education, and security operations. She's also an instructor for a journalist safety research program at OsloMet University, where she teaches digital security topics. Neena has been at NYT for more than 5 years, and previously worked in consulting and government. Neena enjoys cooking, hanging out with her cat, playing volleyball, and napping.

On Twitter: @neenahyena

panel

When data assumes a male population

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Equity & inclusion

Description

It’s hard to make a good decision without good data. Yet there are so many instances where decisions are made without regard to how those choices will affect half the population, from body armor that gives military women stress fractures because it is designed for a male body, to medicines approved even though they have only been tested on men (regardless of whether the drug treats a disease that mostly affects women.)

Additionally, there are many ways surveys are designed and collected that often exclude women. For example, the Census and other surveys make assumptions about a person's daily commute. Women's commutes are often a lot more complicated because they don't have a to-work and from-work structure - women are statistically more likely to be the one who drops junior off at school and takes grandma to the doctor.

This panel will highlight articles that have shone a light on gendered data gaps. It will also provide tips on how to find gender and sex-aggregated numbers, practical advice on what to do with it, as well as potential strategies for determining gender/sex bias in the data, and determining who is missing.We’ll spend time looking at the way women are excluded in data, and ways to sniff that out.

How can we better report with data to account for these data collection errors? What are strategies we can use as journalists to account for women missing in data?

Speakers

Erin Mansfield, USA Today 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Jasmine Mithani, The 19th* 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Janelle O'Dea, The Center for Public Integrity 👇

Janelle O'Dea started recently as a data reporter for the Center for Public Integrity after five years in the same role at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She likes Python, pandas and cats.

On Twitter: @jayohday

Lucia Walinchus, Eye on Ohio, the Ohio Center for Journalism 👇

Lucia Walinchus, Esq. is the Executive Director at Eye on Ohio. She was a 2016 Fulbright Berlin Capital Program Scholar, has been featured as a guest speaker on CNN and is a contracted freelancer for the New York Times and the Washington Post. Her work has previously been recognized as the Best Investigative Reporting in Ohio, the Best Data Journalism in Ohio, and the Best Public Service Journalism.

On Twitter: @SoSaysLucia

panel

Successful project management for collaboration

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Collaboration

Description

Collaboration is required to do ambitious work, but what does it really take to work well with others? What are the ideal ground rules for successful partnerships in and outside of your organization? Hear from leaders in nonprofit and international news organizations who have made partnerships work for them on projects big and small.

Speakers

Darla Cameron, The Texas Tribune 👇

Darla Cameron is the managing editor for visual journalism for The Texas Tribune. She works with multidisciplinary teams to elevate the visual storytelling and reach audiences across Texas.

On Twitter: @darlacameron

Emilia Díaz-Struck, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) 👇

Emilia is ICIJ’s data and research editor and Latin America coordinator. She has taken part in projects such as ICIJ's Implant Files, Pandora Papers, and the Pulitzer-winning Panama Papers investigation. She has been a professor at the Central University of Venezuela and a contributor for the Washington Post, Venezuelan media El Universal, El Mundo, and Armando.info, which she co-founded. She was previously the investigative reporting coordinator at IPYS Venezuela.

On Twitter: @ICIJOrg

Ryann Jones, ProPublica 👇

Ryann Grochowski Jones is the data editor at ProPublica, where she oversees the newsroom's most ambitious data-driven investigative projects. Previously, she was a data reporter at ProPublica and Investigative Newsource in San Diego, California. She received her master’s degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, where she was a data librarian for IRE/NICAR. Ryann began her career as a municipal beat reporter for her hometown newspaper in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

On Twitter: @ryanngro

Mago Torres, OpenNews 👇

On Twitter: @magiccia

Sessions starting at 4:45 p.m. CT

commons

Supercharge your coding workflow with Chat-GPT and GitHub Copilot

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Edgehill – Meeting Space Level 2

Description

Learn how to use the new batch of AI tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT to supercharge your coding abilities! From eerily-smart autocomplete to explaining code you copied from StackOverflow, these tools provide an always-available buddy that's smart, infinitely patient, and (every now and again) terribly, terribly mistaken.

Whether you're tackling programming for the first time or are a seasoned pro, we'll look at ways to successfully wield these tools that are taking the world by storm. (...and how to clean up when they go astray)

Speaker

Jonathan Soma, Columbia University 👇

Jonathan Soma is Knight Chair of Data Journalism at Columbia University, where he directs both the Data Journalism MS and the summer intensive Lede Program. His courses there cover everything from basic Python and analysis to ai2html and machine learning. When Soma isn't boring his students to tears he's probably rescuing cats.

On Twitter: @dangerscarf

commons

How to investigate pay inequities at your workplace

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

Andrew Ba Tran and Steven Rich of the Washington Post will discuss how they investigated pay disparities at their newspaper, Sarah Blaskey of the Miami Herald will share some of the difficulties in using pay data for individual newsrooms, and Andrew Pantazi of The Tributary will discuss how a team of unionized journalists across Gannett gathered pay data from newsrooms across the country to hold their own company to account for its gender and racial pay inequities. Join this discussion to learn how to gather, clean and present the data, along with reported stories of how pay inequity holds back our newsrooms.

Speakers

Sarah Blaskey, Miami Herald 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Andrew Pantazi, The Tributary 👇

Andrew Pantazi is an editor at The Tributary, a nonprofit investigative news outlet in Jacksonville, Fla. He previously worked as a reporter at The Florida Times-Union and as a union organizer with the NewsGuild. His work has led to the ouster of Jacksonville’s sheriff, sparked grand jury investigations of public officials and resulted in a federal lawsuit that threw out Jacksonville’s racially gerrymandered council districts.

On Twitter: @APantazi

Steven Rich, The Washington Post 👇

Steven Rich is a database editor for investigations at The Washington Post. He was a member of IRE's board of directors from 2015-2021.

On Twitter: @dataeditor

Andrew Ba Tran, Washington Post 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

demo

The Serverless.js framework for Amazon Web Services

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

Serverless.js makes it easy to deploy applications such as web scrapers and data APIs to Amazon Web Services without the need of a server. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

John Perry, The Atlanta Journal Constitution 👇

John Perry is the technical director of Atlanta Journal-Constitution data journalism team. Before coming to the AJC, he was a senior fellow at the Center for Public Integrity and database editor at The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City.

On Twitter: @perryjg

demo

De-mystifying cryptocurrency data: How to find stories on ransoms, insider trading and fraud

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

Cryptocurrencies and the technology powering them are no longer something journalists can dismiss as a passing fad. Even if you don't think Bitcoin is going to replace the dollar, you should get familiar with how to report on crypto. It has created massive fortunes, allowed criminal gangs to extort local and national businesses in new ways and enabled the transfer of money outside of government supervision. The world of crypto often feels opaque and jargony, but Bitcoin, Ethereum and NFTs all work off of public databases, called blockchains–an area ripe for DIY FOIAs, if only journalists knew how.

Three experienced data journalists will share stories, story ideas, and concrete tips for chasing those stories for mainstream journalists to test their hypotheses and extract publishable facts from the blockchain. Their stories have run the gamut from investigating a widespread life-altering financial fraud dependent on a quirk of the Ethereum network, tracking ransomware, examining potential sanctions violations and possible insider trading.

Speakers

Rob Barry, The Wall Street Journal 👇

Rob Barry is an investigative reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal. He helps lead a team of reporters who specialize in computer programming and data analysis.

On Twitter: @rob_barry

Stacy Elliott, Decrypt 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Jeremy Merrill, The Washington Post 👇

Jeremy B. Merrill is a data reporter on the Washington Post's tech desk. He covers social media, crypto, ads/adtech and any shenanigans taking place via HTTPS.

On Twitter: @jeremybmerrill

hands-on

Working with PDFs using off-the-shelf tools

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

Join this class to learn how to “liberate” trapped data locked inside of PDF’s. This class will cover basic approaches for getting text out of PDF documents using powerful and freely available tools. Participants will be introduced to basic concepts and walked through tackling common challenges encountered with tricky PDF documents.

This session is good for: People who are unfamiliar with PDF-to-text tools or would like to learn how these tools can be used for extracting difficult text from images embedded in a PDF document.

Prerequisites: Attendees should have access to a CometDocs account, which you can access through your IRE membership, the free software Tabula and access to Google Drive.

Speaker

Maggie Mulvihill, Boston University 👇

Maggie Mulvihill is an award-winning data and investigative journalist, a former media lawyer, veteran journalism educator and news entrepreneur. She serves on the New England First Amendment Coalition board and the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press Steering Committee.

On Twitter: @maggiemulvihill

panel

Dataviz accessibility matters — here's what you can do to improve it

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Equity & inclusion

Description

News organizations have long struggled with publishing online for all audiences, whether that's captionless videos, cluttered websites, or inaccessible graphics. We will touch on the technical and cultural pitfalls newsrooms and the people in them face when publishing graphics and interactives online, and dive into what we all can do to improve the accessibility of our data visualizations.

Speakers

Frank Elavsky, Carnegie Mellon University 👇

Frank is a former software engineer who worked on a library of accessible data visualization design system components and now is a PhD student and researcher at Carnegie Mellon University. Frank is an invited expert with the Web Accessibility Initiative's ARIA working group and organizes and runs a group within the Data Visualization Society focused on accessibility.

On Twitter: @FrankElavsky

Patrick Garvin, Independent journalist 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Jasmine Mithani, The 19th* 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Joe Murphy, NBC News 👇

NBC News data editor. Back-whens: NY Daily News, Denver Post, Medill. Oregonian born and raised.

On Twitter: @joemurph

Thomas Wilburn, Civic News 👇

Thomas Wilburn is the Senior Data Editor for Civic News, where he manages a small team working on analysis and visualization for Chalkbeat and Votebeat. Previously, he was a news apps developer for NPR, and a founding member of the Seattle Times Interactives Team.

Sessions starting at 5:45 p.m. CT

special

First-timers reception

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 5:45 – 6:15 p.m. CT (30m)

🚪 Room: TBD

Description

Come and mingle with folks who are excited to attend their first NICAR conference. This is a great time to build your network, make lifelong conference buddies and hear about which sessions people are most excited about.

🔊 Speaker details coming soon!

Sessions starting at 6 p.m. CT

special

Welcome reception

🕙 Thursday (3/2) • 6 – 7:15 p.m. CT (75m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

Description

Join us for our welcome reception on Thursday at 6 p.m., co-sponsored by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Reconnect with longtime friends and welcome new attendees! Each attendee will receive one drink ticket for beer, wine, soda or bottled water. Light snacks also will be served.

🔊 Speaker details coming soon!

Friday, 3/3

Sessions starting at 7:30 a.m. CT

special

Mentor program breakfast - invitation-only event

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 7:30 – 8:45 a.m. CT (75m)

🚪 Room: Music City Ballroom – Hotel Level 2

Description

If you signed up for the conference mentor program, come meet your match at this invitation-only breakfast, sponsored by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, University of Missouri.

🔊 Speaker details coming soon!

Sessions starting at 9 a.m. CT

hands-on

Finding the story: Nursing homes data

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

Nursing homes rightfully earned a lot of attention during the pandemic, but now, three years later, there's even more to investigate. Come to this session to learn about the data that's out there just waiting for us, and for inspiration for your own investigations into nursing homes and their operators in your communities. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

David Barer, KXAN News 👇

David is the senior investigative producer and reporter with KXAN News -- the NBC affiliate of Central Texas. David has been formulating, shepherding and smashing that publish button on data-driven investigations for the last eight years. Using data, he covered nursing homes extensively during the pandemic and beyond.

On Twitter: @david_barer

hands-on

Making redistricting data your friend: Finding out what information is out there and how you can use it

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

While redistricting happens every ten years, the redistricting data is readily available annually and can prove essential in reporting. From demographical information on race, sex, and age to more detailed looks at median household income and languages spoken at home– redistricting data can give provide context to your reporting and create new stories for you to explore. In this session, we’ll explore what data is accessible and how it can be used to bolster your reporting. Come with story ideas you want to explore!

This session is good for: Beginners who want to know what data is available and how you can use it.

Speaker

Kate Huangpu, Spotlight PA 👇

A graduate of the Columbia Journalism School’s data journalism program, Huangpu got her start reporting on police accountability and social services for survivors of domestic violence in New York City. She previously worked at ABC’s World News Tonight and MSNBC. Huangpu now follows how and why the state government works the way it does, paying special attention to how the structure of our government expands or excludes who can participate in democracy.

On Twitter: @katehuangpu13

hands-on

Google Sheets 4: Advanced pivot tables

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 12 South 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

You've done a few pivot tables and are getting curious about what more you could do with them. What happens if you aggregate by more than one column? What are those "column" and "filter" boxes for? Come unlock the full potential of pivot tables in this intermediate spreadsheet class.

This session is good for: People familiar with spreadsheets and aggregating data with pivot tables, or anyone who has taken Sheets 1-3.

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you will need a free Google account to participate.

Speaker

Helena Bengtsson, Gota Media 👇

Helena Bengtsson is data journalism editor at Gota Media, a regional publishing company in the south of Sweden with 14 local titles. She previously worked as editor for data journalism at Sveriges Television, Sweden’s national television broadcaster, for 27 years, and she also served as editor, data projects, at The Guardian between 2014-2017. In 2006 and 2007, she was database editor at the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C.

On Twitter: @HelenaBengtsson

hands-on

Data of divides

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Equity & inclusion

Description

Doing data-driven inequality stories often means using statistical tools.

Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Basic familiarity with R is a plus,

Download and install R and the free open-source version of R Studio for your operating system.

We'll be focusing on some basic statistical tools in R.

Please make sure you have installed the following packages:

install.packages(""tidyverse"") #Working with data

install.packages(""knitr"") #make code files

install.packages(""psych"") #stats

install.packages(""tidycensus"") #it will change your life

install.packages(""lme4"") #for logistic regression

install.packages(""boot"") #for logistic regression

install.packages(""ggeffects"") #for logistic regression

install.packages(""DescTools"") #for logistic regression

install.packages(""varhandle"") #for creating dummy variables

Speaker

Jennifer LaFleur, Center for Public Integrity 👇

Jennifer LaFleur is a senior editor at The Center for Public Integrity. She joined CPI from the Investigative Reporting Workshop. She also teaches at American University.

On Twitter: @j_la28

hands-on

Finding needles in haystacks with fuzzy matching

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Sylvan Park – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Fuzzy matching is a process for linking up names that are similar but not quite the same. It has become an increasingly important part of data-driven investigations as a way to identify connections between public figures, key people and companies that are relevant to a story. This class will cover how fuzzy matching typically fits into the investigative process, with some story examples. Max Harlow, who developed the CSV Match command line tool, will show you how to run some of the different types of fuzzy matching on some real datasets, including the pros and cons of each.

This session is good for: People who feel comfortable using the command line.

Speaker

Max Harlow, Financial Times 👇

Max Harlow works on the visual and data journalism team at the Financial Times in London, where he focuses on using data to find and tell investigative stories.

On Twitter: @maxharlow

panel

Mining social media, without depending on the sites' owners goodwill

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

Social media is as important as ever to politics, from the local level to the international, but researchers fear that owners of social media sites have become more hostile to the press and will make it harder for us to access the tools we use to track politicians' activities and monitor disinformation.

Junkipedia is a project run by the non-profit Algorithmic Transparency Institute which helps journalists and civil society groups gather, track, search and monitor social media sites.

Junkipedia exists to gather data for journalists, even if platform tools go away. In a sense, you can replace the social media scrapers you don't have time to maintain with Junkipedia's.

Learn how you can (for free!) monitor politicians and online influencers relevant to your region or beat and gather data from previously opaque data sources like right-wing alt-tech social media sites and podcast transcripts.

Speakers

Andrea Fuller, The Wall Street Journal 👇

On Twitter: @anfuller

Cam Hickey, National Conference on Citizenship 👇

Cameron Hickey is the CEO of the National Conference on Citizenship. He leads an effort to develop methodologies and tools for collecting and analyzing data to increase transparency about how large digital platforms impact society. Hickey covered science and technology for the PBS NewsHour and NOVA and has won a News and Documentary Emmy Award and a Newhouse Mirror Award for his journalism.

On Twitter: @cameronhickey

Jeremy Merrill, The Washington Post 👇

Jeremy B. Merrill is a data reporter on the Washington Post's tech desk. He covers social media, crypto, ads/adtech and any shenanigans taking place via HTTPS.

On Twitter: @jeremybmerrill

panel

Keeping Secrets: Secure source communications

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Security

Description

Keeping your conversations with a source protected can oftentimes be overwhelming, especially with a lot of security lingo tossed in. In other cases, the advice isn’t practical because it doesn’t meet your source where they’re at. In this talk, we’ll discuss things to consider when it comes to securing your communications, what you can set up ahead of time and the benefits of different approaches.

The Security Track is sponsored by The Paranoids. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speaker

Sarah Kate Thomas, The New York Times 👇

Sarah Kate is a manager of Information Security at The New York Times, leading the security education team. Sarah Kate holds a Master's in Cybersecurity from New York University and dual undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and Philosophy from Wake Forest University. Born and raised in Texas, she now lives in New York City with her partner and their cat, Winky.

panel

Uncovering underground money networks

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: International

Description

In this panel, we'll explore techniques and tools to uncover complex money networks and relationships between people, companies, governments, and financial institutions. We'll use two real-world examples: a recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal that used bulk data collection and analysis in combination with AI tools to uncover a Russia-linked underground money network that intersected with the United States, and a sprawling effort by OCCRP to track down and catalog the vast wealth held outside Russia by sanctioned oligarchs and key figures close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

We will delve into the process of data collection, management, and analysis, including the use of open-source tools, methods for collaboration, and interfaces for visualizing and analyzing the data. We’ll show how we tried (and sometimes failed) to prove ownership of yachts, luxury properties, and even racehorses across complex holding structures, how readers helped identify seaside vacation homes of Putin's associates, and which open-source data sources were the most useful.

We will also discuss the use of advanced techniques such as social network analysis, cyber forensic methods like tracing historical WHOIS records and IP addresses, and the role of AI and machine learning in helping extract meaning from vast troves of information. This panel will be particularly useful for those interested in replicating similar analysis on leaked documents and bulk corporate records, and for understanding the broader landscape of underground money networks.

Speakers

Rob Barry, The Wall Street Journal 👇

Rob Barry is an investigative reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal. He helps lead a team of reporters who specialize in computer programming and data analysis.

On Twitter: @rob_barry

Cindy Galli, ABC News 👇

Cindy Galli is Executive Producer of ABC News’ award-winning Investigative Unit in New York. She oversees a team of network reporters and producers specializing in investigations ranging from government fraud and corporate corruption to racial injustice, consumer and environmental issues. She is currently vice president on IRE’s board of directors and has been a member since 1994. A San Francisco Bay Area native, Cindy began her career at KGO-TV and is a Berkeley alum.

On Twitter: @mustangalli

Jan Strozyk, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project 👇

Jan is OCCRP's senior data editor and co-head of the Research & Data team. He coordinates data analysis and research and works on data-driven investigations.

On Twitter: @jlstro

panel

Beyond the fire perimeter — data for wildfire investigations

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

Wildfire prevention and response are massive endeavors stretching across local, state and federal agencies — they're complex, high stakes, big budget, and rarely covered in deep dives. They also generate lots of data, but knowing where to look and what you're looking at can be challenging as a reporter. This session will cover how metrics are tracked, how to approach wildfire data with an investigative mindset, and some of the panelists' favorite databases.

Speakers

Adiel Kaplan, NBC News 👇

Adiel Kaplan is a reporter with the NBC News national investigative unit. Her stories frequently run as both articles on NBCNews.com and television segments on Nightly News, the TODAY Show and NBC News NOW. She is an assistant professor at Columbia Journalism School's Stabile Center for Investigative Reporting, and she previously worked for the Miami Herald and InvestigateWest.

On Twitter: @adielkaplan

Veronica Penney, Colorado Public Radio 👇

Veronica Penney is a data reporter on Colorado Public Radio's investigations team. She previously worked at The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Investigations and the Miami Herald.

On Twitter: @veronica_penney

Emily Zentner, California Newsroom 👇

Emily Zentner is the investigative data reporter for the California Newsroom focusing on climate change. She previously worked as a data reporter at Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, where she reported on wildfires, police handling of sexual assault cases, the COVID-19 pandemic and more.

On Twitter: @emilymzentner

pre-registration - hands-on

First Python Notebook

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 9 a.m. – 5:45 p.m. CT (420m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 1 – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $75 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

In this session, experienced journalists will guide you through a six-hour, hands-on investigation of money in politics.

You will learn:

* just enough Python to execute an analysis with pandas, one of the most popular open-source tools for working with data tables

* how to record, remix and republish your work using Jupyter, a browser-based tool emerging as the standard for reproducible research

* how to explore your data using the Altair data visualization library, a Python package that offers a simple, structured grammar for generating graphics.

Along the way you’ll conduct your own investigation of California campaign donors using the Big Local News open-source database archive.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Laptops will be provided.

Prerequisites: If you've tried Python once or twice, have a good attitude and know how to take a few code crashes in stride, you are qualified.

Speakers

Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee, Los Angeles Times 👇

Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee is a data reporter on the Los Angeles Times Data Desk, where she has reported on groundwater depletion, election results and campaign finance. She was previously the data editor at Chalkbeat, a nonprofit news organization covering education across several cities and states. Gabrielle has a master’s degree in information design and data visualization from the College of Arts, Media and Design at Northeastern University.

On Twitter: @lamarr_lemee

Andrea Suozzo, ProPublica 👇

Andrea Suozzo is a news apps developer at ProPublica, where she works on Nonprofit Explorer, builds databases and does reporting. In her free time, she runs, reads, sews, knits and plays the fiddle.

On Twitter: @asuozzo

Ben Welsh, Reuters 👇

Ben Welsh is the News Application Editor at Reuters and a fellow at the DePaul University Center for Journalism Integrity & Excellence

On Twitter: @palewire

pre-registration - master class

Master Class: Managing investigators… or how to lead journalists born to challenge authority

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

Being a news manager is already tough, but what if you supervise investigative journalists? They come with an extra layer of challenges, because their very job (and likely their personality) makes them hyper-alert to authority figures.

This course is designed to give you some tools and tactics to lead individuals and entire teams of investigators in a more effective way. Learn from four investigative managers from different media at different stages of their leadership careers. How did they launch into their roles, and what experience have they gained along the way? This course is for current investigative managers and anyone aspiring to step into such a position in the future.

Topics will include: managing compassionately, hiring challenges, transitioning to management, forging partnerships, building relationships, handling resource cuts, organization/structure, tough decisions/conversations, in-house training/growth, delivering feedback, creating inclusive opportunities, and juggling responsibilities/projects/work.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speakers

Jodie Fleischer, Cox Media Group 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Josh Hinkle, KXAN/St. Edward's University 👇

On Twitter: @hinklej

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. Previously, Torres worked as an investigative producer for NBC6 in Miami and co-founder of FCIR.org. Throughout her career, Torres has worked for numerous newspapers across the country including the Sun-Sentinel and the San Antonio Express-News. Torres was the first Latina to be elected to the IRE board of directors.

On Twitter: @WatchdogDiva

Sessions starting at 10:15 a.m. CT

commons

How to retain the NICAR spirit year-round

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Edgehill – Meeting Space Level 2

Description

NICAR is one of the best ways to learn new tools and get motivated. But what about the other 362 days of the year? This session will give you tips, tricks and tools for staying connected to the data journalism community and keeping your skills sharp year-round. We’ll also talk about problem-solving strategies for the “lonely coders” out there.

Speaker

Janelle O'Dea, The Center for Public Integrity 👇

Janelle O'Dea started recently as a data reporter for the Center for Public Integrity after five years in the same role at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She likes Python, pandas and cats.

On Twitter: @jayohday

demo

Reporting with Google Trends

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

What is Google Trends data and how do you make sense of it? Learn how to use Trends data to understand what people are interested through searches. Discover new ways to leverage the tool for your writing and find story inspiration.

Speaker

Jenny Lee, Google 👇

Jenny is the lead data analyst with the Trends team at Google. She graduated from the University of California, Davis, with a bachelor’s degree in statistics and economics. Jenny helps people make sense of data and discover interesting stories through Trends. She loves analyzing search behaviors to find how people respond to events and breaking news as well as uncovering fun and unexpected insights.

demo

How to propose an accessibility team or role in your newsroom: What they do and why they are needed

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Equity & inclusion

Description

A day in the life of an accessibility specialist may not be what you expect. And it can differ between companies. I'll go over some of the models out there and demo a bit of what I do as the first-ever Accessibility Engineer at The Washington Post. I'll outline how I pitched my job at The Post after starting an informal accessibility working group at the company. I'll also share insights on how you can advocate for similar roles in newsrooms of any size (they don't have to be engineering roles).

The goal is for you to learn:

- a variety of accessibility considerations, especially those less discussed in media today

- what an accessibility specialist actually does (my job at The Post is just one model)

- strategies on making a business case for accessibility roles in newsrooms

Not all newsrooms have the same resources. This session will take that into account. Accessibility can and should be the job of someone (or an entire team!) in your newsroom.

Speaker

Holden Foreman, The Washington Post 👇

Holden (he/him) is The Washington Post's first-ever accessibility engineer. He has been with The Post since June 2020, when he started as an engineering intern. He worked on live elections coverage from 2021-22. He is also a coordinator of The Post’s engineering internship program. He is passionate about local journalism and newsroom accountability on diversity, equity and inclusion. He is from St. Louis, Missouri, and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He loves running. Ask him anything.

On Twitter: @hsforeman

hands-on

Data analysis in JavaScript

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Learn how to crunch your data with JavaScript. Journalist Nael Shiab will teach you how to use the Simple-Data-Analysis library (github.com/nshiab/simple-data-analysis) to retrieve, clean, analyze and visualize data. You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class. Prior to the class, you should sign up for an Observable account: observablehq.com.

This session is good for: People with some coding experience (JavaScript, R, Python, etc.). Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Naël Shiab, CBC 👇

On Twitter: @NaelShiab

hands-on

Python: Working with PDFs using pdfplumber

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Sylvan Park – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

💪 Skill level: Advanced

Description

Wonderful tools such as Tabula have made it easier to extract tabular data from PDFs. But what if your pile of PDFs is more complex than that? Maybe there are a few bits of info that you need to grab outside the tables, or maybe the information isn't tabular at all?

In this session, we'll use pdfplumber, an open-source Python library, to demonstrate some techniques. We'll also demystify some aspects of the PDF file format, which will come in handy no matter what tools you use.

This session would be good for: People with some prior experience using Python.

Speaker

Jeremy Singer-Vine, The Data Liberation Project 👇

Jeremy Singer-Vine runs the Data Liberation Project and writes Data Is Plural, a weekly newsletter.

hands-on

Finding the story: The American Community Survey

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

Data from the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey can help you tell all kinds of important stories about your community. In this session, you will learn how to find and analyze this data in Google Sheets, and you'll leave with some ideas about how to incorporate these survey results into your coverage.

This session is good for anyone, no data experience necessary.

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you will need a free Google account to participate.

Speaker

Tim Henderson, Stateline 👇

Tim Henderson is a data analyst and demographics writer at Stateline, part of the Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, DC. He has also been a web developer and reporter at Gannett Newspapers in New York and the Miami Herald.

On Twitter: @TimHendersonSL

hands-on

Using OpenRefine to powerwash your data

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

Learn how to use OpenRefine, a powerful tool for quickly cleaning up dirty data. You'll learn about faceting, simple clustering, applying common data transformations and more.

This session is good for people with basic experience working with data.

Speaker

Susie Neilson, The San Francisco Chronicle 👇

Susie Neilson is a data reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle focused on housing and criminal justice. Previously, she has worked for Business Insider, NPR, The Center for Investigative Reporting and several other publications. She lives in Oakland, where she enjoys regular sightings of the official city bird and her favorite animal: the Black-crowned night heron.

On Twitter: @susieneilson

hands-on

Finding the story: Providing context to the equity and inclusion debate using education data

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 12 South 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

🚂️ Track: Equity & inclusion

Description

Over the past two years, public education has been flooded by a national debate on "controversial" topics such as lessons and books about race and racism, accurate history lessons that highlight marginalized voices and most recently, LGBTQ people, gender and sexual identity. There's various different ways to keep track of these challenges to public education, whether they're happening at the state level or within districts. This is a session that'll demonstrate how to stay on top of covering this culture war within K-12 education.

This session is good for people with basic experience working with data. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Eesha Pendharkar, Education Week 👇

Eesha Pendharkar is a reporter for Education Week covering race and opportunity in schools across the country. She has previously worked for daily newspapers in Massachusetts and Maine as a general assignment and education reporter and also specializes in data reporting.

On Twitter: @Eeshapendharkar

panel

Quick turn data stories: Using the quick turn to your advantage

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

How to do quicker data stories that don’t suck or drain you of your will to do journalism. Participants will learn how to take a new dataset and break down their ideas into short-term, mid-term, and long-term projects.

Speakers

Alexandra Kanik, Houston Chronicle / San Antonio Express-News 👇

Alexandra Kanik is the data visualization editor for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. Previously, she worked as a data journalist for Louisville Public Media and PublicSource.

On Twitter: @act_rational

Ryan Serpico, San Antonio Express-News 👇

Ryan Serpico is a graphics reporter for the San Antonio Express-News. He specializes in creating quick-turn data stories and helping other journalists with their data-driven stories. He builds tools for the newsroom that take advantage of generative AI — like GPT-3 — in a safe and responsible manner. He graduated from the University of Florida in 2018. He is thankful to all those who helped him get this far. Follow him on Mastodon: @ryan@ryanserpi.co

On Twitter: @ryan_serpico

panel

Large-scale scraping projects

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

It's easier and cheaper than ever to do large-scale scraping projects with a small team. In this session, speakers will discuss code, cloud computing infrastructure, and lessons learned while we worked on our scraping projects.

Speakers

Jeff Kao, ProPublica 👇

Jeff Kao is a computational journalist at ProPublica. His collaboration with The New York Times on Chinese government censorship of the coronavirus outbreak was a part of the newspaper’s winning entry for the 2021 public service Pulitzer. His project on Parler and the Capitol riots was cited throughout Donald Trump’s second impeachment hearing and won the 2021 IRE Award for breaking news. His work has also won the Loeb Award for international reporting in 2022.

On Twitter: @jeffykao

Ilica Mahajan, The Marshall Project 👇

On Twitter: @IlicaMahajan

Leon Yin, The Markup 👇

Leon Yin is an investigative data journalist at The Markup. He uses interdisciplinary methods and bespoke datasets to report on technology and monopolies. In 2022, he received a Gerald Loeb Award for the series "Amazon's Advantage." Before journalism, he was a research scientist at The Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University. Leon started his career writing Fortran scripts at NASA.

On Twitter: @leonyin

Sessions starting at 11:30 a.m. CT

demo

Let's talk Data Memos!

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

It's an important and often underappreciated step in every data project. Let's talk about how we've tackled it in the past and share tips on how to make it both comprehensive AND understandable to reporters. Possible topics to discuss: Organization and formatting tips, how to best update data over time, any alternatives to Google Docs, etc. Bring examples if you have any to share and discuss what you've learned from the process.

Speaker

Carla Astudillo, The Texas Tribune 👇

On Twitter: @carla_astudi

hands-on

How to produce Long COVID coverage informed by data, public records and patient experiences

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 12 South 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

Description

This session will discuss tools, strategies, and story ideas for using public records and data to report on Long COVID. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Betsy Ladyzhets, MuckRock & independent journalist 👇

Betsy Ladyzhets is a science, health, and data journalist focused on COVID-19. She runs the COVID-19 Data Dispatch, a publication that provides news and resources on pandemic data. She's also a part-time journalism fellow at MuckRock's Documenting COVID-19 project, and a freelancer for outlets including Science News, The Atlantic, FiveThirtyEight, and Gothamist/WNYC.

On Twitter: @betsyladyzhets

hands-on

Analyze large datasets in Google Sheets via Google Cloud

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

Description

Connect large data sets to Google Sheets, which has UI patterns, querying tools and other affordances that more newsroom collaborators are comfortable with.

This session is good for: people comfortable with csv, cloud services, spreadsheets and some SQL familiarity. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speakers

Jasmine Cui, NBC News 👇

Jasmine is a data journalist with NBC News. She reports out of Atlanta.

On Twitter: @certainforest

Tiff Fehr, The New York Times 👇

Tiff Fehr is a staff engineer and project editor within the Interactive News Technology (INT) team, a group of technologists embedded in the newsroom of The New York Times. She focuses on custom software development for the newsroom in addition to data journalism projects like The Times's Covid-19 public data set.

hands-on

Finding the story: Inflation data

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

Description

This class for beginners will use basic concepts and data on inflation to show how data journalism lets us find and tell stories. Simple spreadsheet exercises will show how to calculate inflation rates for various periods, areas, people and types of goods and services. We'll use the results to find and sharpen potential stories.

This session is good for anyone.

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you will need a free Google account to participate.

Speaker

Paul Overberg, The Wall Street Journal 👇

Paul Overberg is a data reporter at The Wall Street Journal and a member of its investigative team. The 2020 census isn't the first he's covered -- or the second. He has organized and led many IRE/NICAR panels, classes and seminars to help journalists understand demographic data. He also has taught at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism and served as a senior fellow for the Center for Health Journalism at the University of Southern California.

On Twitter: @poverberg

hands-on

Command line for reporters on a Mac

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Sylvan Park – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Too often in data journalism we forget about the basics. And it doesn't get as basic as the command line. Even knowing a little will make your job easier. We will run through some simple commands, dive into working with spreadsheets and show you some handy tools he frequently uses at work.

This session is good for: People who feel intimidated by the command line on their computer, but want to explore the power of command line tools.

Speaker

AJ Vicens, CyberScoop 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

hands-on

Finding the story: Parole boards

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

Criminal justice data can be really messy! But isn't it tempting to ask questions from it? We will work with parole data to answer a straightforward question: How do Nebraska Parole Board members vote or miss votes? Flatwater Free Press reporter Yanqi Xu will show you how to reshape datasets to make them ready for analysis, and how to use data as a guide to identify impacted “real people.”

This session would be good for people with basic experience with R.

Speaker

Yanqi Xu, The Flatwater Free Press 👇

Yanqi Xu is a reporter at the Flatwater Free Press in Nebraska. She uses data to cover accountability stories and recently completed a project about nitrate contamination of groundwater in Nebraska.

On Twitter: @yanqixu_

panel

Reporting Tools: Security research for reporters

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Security

Description

Examples of stories made possible by radio spycraft and cybersecurity auditing tools. Flight tracking, finding iBeacon ad tracking, decompiling smartphone apps / analyzing network traffic from smartphone apps (to find things like healthcare/abortion apps sending info to Facebook or data brokers).

The Security Track is sponsored by The Paranoids. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speaker

Mike Tigas, ProPublica 👇

Mike Tigas is the Lead Product Developer (DevOps + Security) at ProPublica. He previously worked on news applications. Outside of ProPublica he is a core contributor to the Tor Project, working on censorship-circumventing mobile apps. He was an adjunct instructor at New York University's Studio20 digital journalism program and was a 2013 Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Fellow. On Mastadon: @mtigas@mastodon.social

panel

30 places to find data to cover issues in your community

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Public records

Description

A lightning-paced survey of datasets that can help reporters no matter what area of the country you cover. Come ready to take quick notes — we’ll have a timer going to make sure we hit as many datasets as possible! Some will be more well known, some you’ll never have heard of, and we’ll show examples of what you can do with them.

Speakers

Willoughby Mariano, Atlanta Journal-Constitution 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Sean McMinn, POLITICO 👇

Sean McMinn is the editor of data and graphics at POLITICO. His team specializes in covering policy and politics through a data-focused lens. Sean also teaches at Northwestern University's D.C. masters program. He was previously a data journalist at NPR and CQ Roll Call, and he is excited to see his country music and data journalism passions collide in Nashville!

On Twitter: @shmcminn

Kevin Uhrmacher, The Washington Post 👇

Kevin Uhrmacher is an assignment editor on The Washington Post's Graphics team. He oversees visual stories relating to politics, including elections, public policy, abortion access and other national coverage. He joined The Post as a news design and graphics intern in 2014 and spent six years as a graphics reporter. He graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill.

On Twitter: @KevinUhrm

panel

Data Dive: The 2022 Philip Meyer winners

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Behind the story

Description

A data deep dive into the 2022 Philip Meyer Award winners. Hear from reporters on how they gathered, cleaned, analyzed and visualized the data behind some of the year's biggest stories.

Speakers

Michael Biesecker, Associated Press 👇

Michael Biesecker is a global investigative reporter for The Associated Press, based in Washington, D.C. He reports on a wide range of topics, including human conflict, climate change, political corruption and deaths in government custody. Over the years, Biesecker’s investigations have led directly to legal reforms and criminal convictions. He also teaches graduate courses in investigative journalism and climate reporting at Georgetown University.

On Twitter: @mbieseck

Sarah Cohen, Arizona State University 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Emily Corwin, Independent Journalist 👇

Emily Corwin is an investigative reporter with a background in public radio and podcasting. Following a Nieman fellowship in 2021, Emily spent a year exposing how a tax credit that was meant to help marginalized workers get permanent jobs instead gives hundreds of millions of dollars to the temp industry. It was published in 2022 by ProPublica.

On Twitter: @emilycorwin

Ilica Mahajan, The Marshall Project 👇

On Twitter: @IlicaMahajan

Sessions starting at 12:45 p.m. CT

special

Media lawyers Q&A

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 12:45 – 1:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

Description

Does your investigation contain complex legal questions? Unsure of how to proceed? Bring your lunch and your questions for a personal discussion with some prominent media law experts. We'll provide drinks and dessert.

Speakers

Maggie Mulvihill, Boston University 👇

On Twitter: @maggiemulvihill

Matt Topic, Loevy & Loevy 👇

Matt Topic is a media and transparency attorney. He has litigated hundreds of state and federal FOIA cases on behalf of journalists and others.

On Twitter: @mvtopic

Katie Townsend, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press 👇

Katie Townsend is Deputy Executive Director and Legal Director at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (www.rcfp.org), a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. She oversees the litigation, amicus, and other legal work of RCFP attorneys, and represents the Reporters Committee, news organizations, and individual journalists, including documentary filmmakers, in court access, freedom of information, and other First Amendment and press freedom matters.

On Twitter: @katie_rcfp

Sessions starting at 2:15 p.m. CT

commons

DEI in data reporting

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Edgehill – Meeting Space Level 2

Description

With data collection, algorithms and artificial intelligence affecting larger parts of our lives, journalists should become more comfortable with using data for reporting. But how can we do this while keeping diversity and inclusion in mind, and not leaving some groups behind, or emphasizing a status quo that disadvantages historically excluded communities? This session will offer a compilation of existing resources as well as a callout for more: What resources do you know of? What have your experiences been? Come share, and help build a guide to DEI practices in data reporting that we can all use!

Speakers

Jayme Fraser, USA TODAY / Gannett 👇

Jayme Fraser is an investigative data journalist for USA TODAY based in Montana. She focuses primarily on inequities and the solutions to them, empowering readers with analysis to back up experiences that might otherwise be dismissed as anecdotal. She is interested in policies that support inclusion in the newsroom. Recently, her work has focused on nursing homes, corporate diversity and COVID-19. She uses R but started in Excel.

On Twitter: @jaymekfraser

Samantha Sunne, ProPublica/WVUE 👇

On Twitter: @samanthasunne

hands-on

Introduction to DataWrapper

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 12 South 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

Datawrapper is an increasingly popular online tool for visualizing data. This class will introduce you to the process of creating some basic charts and maps.

This session is good for beginners looking for a data visualization solution that doesn't require learning to code. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Jeff Hargarten, The Star Tribune 👇

Jeff Hargarten is a Minneapolis-based enterprise journalist at the intersection of data analysis, reporting, coding and design.

On Twitter: @jeffhargarten

hands-on

Command-line data analysis with VisiData

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Sylvan Park – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

VisiData is a fast, powerful, keyboard-driven tool for quickly exploring datasets. It's often the first piece of software I use to examine new data. In this hands-on session, you'll learn VisiData's essentials commands — including how to sort, filter, summarize and aggregate.

This session is good for: People who have a basic familiarity with your computer's command line interface. No programming knowledge necessary, but some knowledge of Python is a plus.

Speaker

Jeremy Singer-Vine, The Data Liberation Project 👇

Jeremy Singer-Vine runs the Data Liberation Project and writes Data Is Plural, a weekly newsletter.

hands-on

Google Sheets: Using string functions to manipulate data

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

Maybe you converted a PDF or imported a table into a spreadsheet -- or maybe an agency gave you a poorly formatted file. You can use string functions to reformat your data and get your spreadsheets working for you.

This session is good for: Anyone comfortable with using formulas and functions in Google Sheets.

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you will need a free Google account to participate.

Speaker

Madi Alexander, POLITICO 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

hands-on

Regular expressions for the rest of us

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Regular expressions are a powerful tool when working with data. They're supported by a variety of text editors, databases and programming languages, but they can be intimidating. Get familiar with the basics of regular expressions and how they can help with your next batch of dirty data.

This session is good for: People who have ever done more than two search/replace actions to clean a data set, or had to split a ZIP code from an address or otherwise want to conquer their fears of regex. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Justin Myers, The Associated Press 👇

Justin Myers is the data editor at The Associated Press, where he supports a team of data journalists distributed around the United States. Previously, he worked on newsroom tools, interactive graphics and data reporting projects for the AP, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle of Philanthropy and the PBS NewsHour. He holds degrees in both engineering and journalism, and he lives in Chicago.

On Twitter: @myersjustinc

panel

A conversation with U.S. Census Bureau director, Robert L. Santos

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

Description

Join U.S. Census Bureau director, Robert Santos, and longtime census reporter, Paul Overberg, in conversation.

This session is sponsored by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Paul Overberg, The Wall Street Journal 👇

On Twitter: @poverberg

Robert L. Santos, U.S. Census Bureau 👇

Rob Santos is the 26th director of the U.S. Census Bureau. His 40 year career includes serving in executive and technical positions in statistics and survey operations. He is also a champion of diversity, equity and inclusion. He was president of the American Statistical Association in 2021 and is an ASA Fellow. He was also the 2014 president of the American Association for Public Opinion Research and has received numerous awards over his career.

On Twitter: @censusdirector

panel

Source tracking: Making it part of your newsroom practice

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Equity & inclusion

Description

Source diversity tracking should be a piece of every newsroom’s diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging strategies. This hands-on workshop will introduce DEIB newsroom strategy principles via a playbook or practices and strategies to bring meaningful source tracking to your newsroom and an intro to free source tracking tool built by RJI and Chalkbeat.

Speakers

Emma Carew Grovum, The Marshall Project 👇

Emma Carew Grovum is the director of careers and culture at The Marshall Project and the founder of Kimbap Media. In addition to supporting newsrooms on their diversity, equity and inclusion journeys, she is also a product strategist and leadership coach. Emma is a past fellow at the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and also worked to help build a practical guide to preparing newsrooms for source tracking.

On Twitter: @emmacarew

Will Lager, Reynolds Journalism Institute 👇

William Lager is a multidisciplinary journalist bridging the spaces between journalism, data and the public through equitable collaborations, visual storytelling, audience engagement, product and design development as a consulting journalist, product developer and multidisciplinary editor for data, graphics and audience engagement. Lager's work may be explored at wlager.com. Lager is currently the senior editor and project manager at the Reynolds Journalism Institute.

On Twitter: @iniwil

panel

QAnon in Europe: Tracing a viral conspiracy through social media through collaborative journalism

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: International

Description

Bellingcat and Lighthouse Reports created a database of over 30 million QAnon-affiliated social media posts to understand how QAnon followers exploit social media infrastructure to spread misinformation internally and across borders. Find out how we built it and how journalists can trace conspiracy theories through the database themselves.

Speakers

Justin-Casimir Braun, Lighthouse Reports 👇

Justin is a data journalist focused on the societal impact of digital systems, artificial intelligence and viral conspiracies. In the past, Justin has worked with AlgorithmWatch, a German digital rights organization, the Stanford Internet Observatory and various grassroots non-governmental organizations, documenting human rights violations against migrants on the Balkan Route. He holds a bachelor's degree in international relations from Stanford University.

On Twitter: @jus_braun

Eva Constantaras, Lighthouse Reports 👇

Eva Constantaras is a data journalist specialized in building data journalism collaborations in Europe and in the Global South. These teams have reported from across Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa on accountability issues ranging from broken foreign aid and food insecurity to extractive industries and sanctions evasion. She has also been a Google Data Journalism Scholar and a Fulbright Fellow.

On Twitter: @evaconstantaras

Tristan Lee, Bellingcat 👇

Tristan Lee is a data scientist at Bellingcat whose work focuses on far-right and conspiracy theory networks online, with a particular interest in accelerationist neo-Nazi subcultures. His background is in computational imaging, and he holds a master’s degree in applied physics from the University of Oregon.

On Twitter: @tristan__lee

panel

Data on the business and economics beat

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

No matter what beat you cover, business and finance are increasingly becoming key areas to understand and mine. Get story ideas, learn where to find data, and get advice on how to track down information on essential topics, from banking and finance to worker's issues and consumer protection.

Speakers

Matt Drange, Business Insider 👇

Matt Drange is a reporter on Business Insider's investigations desk. He's received dozens of journalism awards and most recently was honored with the First Amendment Coalition's Free Speech & Open Government Award. Matt sits on SABEW's First Amendment Committee as well as the Freedom of Information Committee of SPJ NorCal. He holds a master's degree from the Columbia Journalism School and teaches journalism at his alma mater, Cal Poly Humboldt.

On Twitter: @mattdrange

Karen K. Ho, ARTnews 👇

Karen K. Ho is a senior staff writer at ARTnews, where she reports on business and art crime. She has contributed to many publications, including Quartz, Business Insider, Men's Health, Glamour, GQ, TIME, The New York Times, The Cut, and the Columbia Journalism Review. She enjoys making Datawrapper charts and taught herself Tracery and JSON to make the Doomscroll Reminder Bot.

On Twitter: @karenkho

Megan Squire, Southern Poverty Law Center 👇

Dr. Megan Squire is deputy director for data analytics and OSINT at the Southern Poverty Law Center. As a computer scientist, she applies her background in data science and cybersecurity to track and expose networks of hate and extremism online.

On Twitter: @megansquire0

pre-registration - hands-on

Upping your Excel game

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 2:15 – 4:30 p.m. CT (135m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $25 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

If you've found yourself struggling in a spreadsheet, thinking that whatever you were trying to achieve seemed harder than it should've been, then this is the class for you. We’ll learn about various tools and functions in Excel that come in handy when you need to re-structure or otherwise get your data ready for analysis. We'll cover string functions, logical functions, date functions, reshaping data, merging data using lookup functions and perhaps a few other nifty tricks if time allows. We’ll do some “drills” introducing you to these concepts, then put your new skills to work in a sort of “scrimmage,” fixing up some real-life data. You’ll also walk out with practice data and a 30-page tipsheet that covers, in detail, everything from the class, plus more that we won’t have time for.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Laptops will be provided for the training.

Workshop prerequisites: You should have prior experience using Excel or Google Sheets, and be comfortable with introductory-level spreadsheet skills, such as sorting, filtering, SUM and AVERAGE functions, calculations such as percentage change or percent of total, and how to use pivot tables.

Speakers

Liz Lucas, IRE & NICAR 👇

Liz is the Senior Training Director for IRE and an adjunct professor of data journalism at the Missouri School of Journalism. She previously worked as Data Editor for Kaiser Health News, as a data reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, and as the Director of Data Services for IRE.

Adam Rhodes, IRE & NICAR 👇

On Twitter: @byadamrhodes

Cody Winchester, IRE & NICAR 👇

Cody was a newspaper reporter, data specialist and web developer before joining IRE as a training director in 2017. He became the organization's tech director in 2022.

pre-registration - hands-on

First GitHub Scraper

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 2:15 – 5:45 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $40 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Iris Lee and Aadit Tambe will guide you through a three-hour, hands-on introduction to free, automated web scraping with GitHub’s powerful Actions framework.

You will learn how to:

* Create a GitHub repository to store your code online

* Write just enough Python to scrape a simple data file

* Configure GitHub Actions to schedule the scrape

* Log the results to the repository and make it publicly accessible

* Send a Slack notification when new data is logged

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and prior to the class you should sign up for a free GitHub account prior to the class. If you have a good attitude and know how to take a few code crashes in stride, you are qualified. We want you.

Speakers

Iris Lee, The Los Angeles Times 👇

Iris Lee is an assistant data and graphics editor at the Los Angeles Times.

On Twitter: @irisslee

Aadit Tambe, The Washington Post 👇

Aadit Tambe works on the news design team at The Washington Post. He builds interactive stories to explain the news visually. Previously, he was a fellow at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland, and has interned at NBC News on the data and graphics team.

On Twitter: @aadittambe

Sessions starting at 3:30 p.m. CT

hands-on

Extracting data from PDFs

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 12 South 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

Description

Learn how to use tools for extracting text from documents. The seminar will discuss the fundamentals of knowing the best tool for the job, a walk-through using free applications, and an introduction to cracking tough cases using Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Scott Pham, independent journalist 👇

Scott Pham is an investigative data reporter whose work has appeared in BuzzFeed News and Reveal/Center for Investigative Reporting. He also teaches data journalism at the City University of New York.

On Twitter: @scottpham

hands-on

Creating and serving vector map tiles using open source tools

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Sylvan Park – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

💪 Skill level: Advanced

Description

Maps are a core component of digital journalism, but what are the options for newsrooms on a budget? In this session, we’ll cover how to use open source tools to generate vector map tiles, apply a custom style, and serve them to readers without breaking the bank.

By the end of this session, you’ll have the tools to:

- Commission a cloud computer to download and process map tiles

- Create a custom style to display the data exactly the way you want

- Publish the final result on an online service that can power your interactive maps

This session is good for: Those who are comfortable with JavaScript and the command line.

Speaker

Evan Wagstaff, Hearst Newspapers 👇

Evan Wagstaff is the director of newsroom engineering for Hearst Newspapers' DevHub, a team of developer journalists who create storytelling tools for local newspapers across the country.

On Twitter: @EvanWagstaff

hands-on

Hands-On with Neo4j: Introduction to graph databases, graph algorithms, and graph data visualization for data journalism

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Advanced

Description

This hands-on session will cover how graph databases (specifically the open-source graph database Neo4j) can be used to analyze data as part of data journalism investigations. We will learn how to import and model data in a graph database, how to query the data using the Cypher query language, and how to use graph algorithms like centrality, community detection, and graph embeddings alongside graph data visualization in the context of data journalism.

This session is good for anyone who is comfortable working with data. Some experience with SQL or coding would be helpful. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

William Lyon, Neo4j 👇

William Lyon is a software developer at Neo4j where he also facilitates Neo4j's Data Journalism Accelerator Program. Prior to joining Neo4j, William worked as a software engineer for several startups building mobile apps, quantitative finance tools, and predictive API services. William holds a masters degree in Computer Science from the University of Montana and is the author of the book "Full Stack GraphQL" published by Manning. You can find him online at lyonwj.com

On Twitter: @lyonwj

hands-on

Google Sheets: Importing and data prep

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

Don't give up if your data isn't presented in a neat spreadsheet. This session will teach you how to get data into a spreadsheet and prepare it for analysis. We will look at how to import text files, deal with data in a PDF, and get a table on a web page into a spreadsheet.

This session is good for: Anyone comfortable working in Google Sheets.

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you will need a free Google account to participate.

Speaker

Paula Lavigne, ESPN 👇

Paula Lavigne is an investigative reporter for ESPN, where she has reported on sexual assaults and athletes, gender equity, crime, sports business, athlete health care, and fan safety. She has a background in data journalism and has previously worked at newspapers in Dallas, Des Moines, and Tacoma, Wash.

On Twitter: @pinepaula

networking

Networking: Journalists of color

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Edgehill – Meeting Space Level 2

🚂️ Track: Networking

Description

Mix and mingle, meet friends old and new, and build your professional community in this fun and informal networking session.

This session is for journalists of color.

Speakers

Lucio Villa, The Washington Post 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Lam Thuy Vo, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism 👇

Lam Thuy Vo is a journalist who marries data analysis with on-the-ground reporting to examine how systems and policies affect individuals. She is currently a data-journalist-in-residence at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and aInformation Futures Lab fellow at Brown University.

On Twitter: @lamthuyvo

panel

Data scraping and mining: What are your legal rights?

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Public records

Description

Recent court rulings have started to clarify some of the ambiguities in state and federal laws that the powerful have wielded to interfere with data journalism — but the risk of being targeted by legal actions for investigating stories online remains. This session would discuss the latest legal developments around data journalism practices like scraping, journalists’ legal rights when it comes to those practices, and the steps journalists can take if they find themselves on the receiving end of legal threats or actions as a result of their reporting.

This session was planned in collabration with Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Grayson Clary, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press 👇

Grayson Clary is a staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, where he works primarily with the organization’s Technology & Press Freedom Project. His litigation, amicus, and advocacy portfolio focuses on press rights issues that arise in the context of national security, law enforcement accountability, and new technologies. Grayson also represents the Reporters Committee on the advisory board of the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.

On Twitter: @GraysonClary

Steven Rich, The Washington Post 👇

Steven Rich is a database editor for investigations at The Washington Post. He was a member of IRE's board of directors from 2015-2021.

On Twitter: @dataeditor

panel

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of "Precision Journalism"

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

📝 Description coming soon!

Speakers

Sarah Cohen, Arizona State University 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Jaimi Dowdell, Reuters 👇

Jaimi Dowdell is a data journalist with Reuters. Previously she was training director for Investigative Reporters and Editors. During that time, she trained thousands of journalists around the world in document- and data-driven reporting. Her work has been recognized with the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism and the Philip Meyer award.

On Twitter: @JaimiDowdell

Brant Houston, University of Illinois and Investigate Midwest 👇

Brant Houston is the Knight Chair in Investigate Reporting at the University of Illinois. He served as the executive director of IRE for a decade. He was an investigative reporter in daily newsrooms for 17 years. He was a co-founder of the Global Investigative Journalism Network in 2003 and co-founder of the Institute for Nonprofit News in 2009. He is a co-author of The Investigative Reporter's Handbook and the author of Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide.

On Twitter: @branthouston

Jennifer LaFleur, Center for Public Integrity 👇

Jennifer LaFleur is a senior editor at The Center for Public Integrity. She joined CPI from the Investigative Reporting Workshop. She also teaches at American University.

On Twitter: @j_la28

Shawn McIntosh, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Cheryl Phillips, Big Local News 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Aron Pilhofer, The Tiny News Collective/Temple University 👇

Aron Pilhofer is the James B. Steele Chair in Journalism Innovation at Temple. His work focuses on new business models, digital transformation and innovation in news. Pilhofer was Executive Editor, Digital, and interim Chief Digital Officer at the Guardian in London. He has been a reporter and editor at The New York Times, The Center for Public Integrity and Gannett. Pilhofer co-founded The Tiny News Collective, DocumentCloud.org and Hacks & Hackers.

Janet Roberts, Reuters 👇

Janet Roberts heads the data journalism team at Reuters and has been wringing stories out of data since she was a student in Phil Meyer’s journalism class at UNC. Before Reuters, she was a data journalist at the New York Times and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She co-edited a data-driven Reuters project that won the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Journalism in 2020 and has been a finalist herself for the same prize.

On Twitter: @jersey_janet

Jim Steele, Independent Journalist 👇

Jim Steele is a long-time investigative reporter, winner of six IRE awards as well as two Pulitzer prizes and many other awards. He and his longtime writing partner Don Barlett worked as a team for more than 40 years at The Philadelphia Inquirer, Time and Vanity Fair. Steele is also the co-author with Barlett of nine books, two of which were New York Times bestsellers.

On Twitter: @JBSPhilly

panel

Reporting on a military base near you using courts-martial records

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

The United States has three systems of justice: civilian, tribal and military.

Across the country and the globe, when service members commit a crime the offense largely goes unreported.

While the Uniform Code of Military Justice means each branch shares the same legal code, data is separately kept by each branch and records may need to be requested from individual bases, an appellate court or the public information officers. Hear from experienced military reporters discuss data and records available to report on a military post near you, the common pitfalls, story ideas and terminology crucial to this topic.

Speakers

Vianna Davila, ProPublica/Texas Tribune 👇

Vianna Davila is a reporter with the ProPublica-Texas Tribune Investigative Initiative. She previously was a reporter with, and then editor of, The Seattle Times’ Project Homeless team. She was a reporter at the San Antonio Express-News for 13 years, covering beats including criminal justice and local government. She has a master's in journalism, with a focus in documentary film, from the University of California, Berkeley. She’s a Texas native.

On Twitter: @viannadavila

Ren Larson, The Assembly 👇

Ren is a journalist with The Assembly, focusing on accountability of institutions, policies and people in North Carolina. Most recently, Ren analyzed Army court-martial data for stories with ProPublica+The Texas Tribune. She holds a master's degrees in public policy and international studies from the University of California-Berkeley.

On Twitter: @renLarson_

Davis Winkie, Military Times 👇

Davis Winkie is a senior reporter covering the Army for Military Times, specializing in accountability reporting, personnel issues and military justice. He joined Military Times in 2020. Davis studied history at Vanderbilt University and UNC-Chapel Hill, writing a master's thesis about how the Cold War-era Defense Department influenced Hollywood's WWII movies.

On Twitter: @davis_winkie

Geoff Ziezulewicz, Military Times 👇

Geoff has published FOIA-fueled investigations into the military services, and the Navy in particular, for the past five or so years with the Military Times, and he has written extensively about the military justice system. Before that, he cut his watchdog teeth at the Chicago Tribune and spent several years overseas earlier in his career covering the Arab Spring and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Geoff's guiding journalistic light is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

On Twitter: @JournoGeoffZ

Sessions starting at 4:45 p.m. CT

hands-on

Making maps with command-line tools

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Sylvan Park – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

💪 Skill level: Advanced

Description

This class will be a hands-on walkthrough of the methods used by Milligan to make the map files that power live, interactive election results maps, inspired heavily by Mike Bostock's Command-Line Cartography Series. (bit.ly/cli-carto)

We'll dig into some popular JSON-based map formats, ways to convert between them, and, ultimately, how to bend them to your will. By the end we'll be able to take a Census shapefile, extract from it exactly what we need, project it, and turn it into either a static image or a TopoJSON ready for your interactive web app. And we'll do it all from the command line using open-source tools, so you can wrap it up in a script and run it again and again!

This session would be good for people with some command-line experience who are comfortable getting knee-deep in some JSON.

Speaker

Andrew Milligan, POLITICO 👇

Andrew Milligan is a senior news apps developer at POLITICO, where he specializes in live election results and other interactive presentations, building both front-end displays and back-end data pipelines. He previously worked at the Associated Press.

On Twitter: @andmilligan

Sessions starting at 5 p.m. CT

special

Lightning Talks ⚡️

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 5 – 6:15 p.m. CT (75m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

Sometimes you don't need 45 minutes to explain a useful technique or interesting resource. Join your colleagues for a session of short (5-minute) talks about doing data journalism, web development and related topics.

Lightning Talks are sponsored by the Knight Foundation.

Speaker

Lam Thuy Vo, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism 👇

On Twitter: @lamthuyvo

Sessions starting at 6:15 p.m. CT

special

Philip Meyer Award presentation and Ring of Honor recognition

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 6:15 – 6:30 p.m. CT (15m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

The presentation of the 2022 Philip Meyer Journalism Awards will take place on Friday evening, directly following Lightning Talks.

The awards recognize the best uses of social research methods in journalism, and they are named in honor of Philip Meyer, author of “Precision Journalism” and retired Knight Chair in Journalism and University of North Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

🔊 Speaker details coming soon!

Sessions starting at 6:30 p.m. CT

special

Philip Meyer Award reception

🕙 Friday (3/3) • 6:30 – 7:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

Description

Join fellow NICAR attendees and award winners at a reception with light appetizers and a cash bar immediately following the awards presentation beginning at 6:30 p.m. Friday.

🔊 Speaker details coming soon!

Saturday, 3/4

Sessions starting at 9 a.m. CT

commons

How to get a seat at the data journalism table and bring more chairs with you

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Edgehill – Meeting Space Level 2

Description

How can we make data journalism a more welcoming and accepting space, and how can we make it more open for newcomers? This NICAR Commons session will aim to create a space for conversation amongst all levels of data experience to break down assumptions, fears, questions and anxieties about getting involved with data and the things that newcomers need to know about it, versus what newcomers *think* they need to know.

Speakers

Cam Rodriguez, Chalkbeat 👇

On Twitter: @journo_cam

Aria Velasquez, Independent journalist 👇

Aria Velasquez is a freelancer currently based in Atlanta, soon to be based in Chicago. She works full-time as a newsletter strategist at Reckon. Outside of her full-time job, Aria's professional interests include audio and local news. Setting aside work entirely, she enjoys rotating through any number of Real Housewives franchises, cooking, knitting and listening to audiobooks or podcasts. You can find her on Instagram @aria.snaps.

demo

OCCRP Aleph: Learn the data tool that enables large cross-border investigations

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

Kickstart your investigations with OCCRP Aleph, the leak taming,

company registry matching, huge dataset wrangling tool that enables the

Organized Crime Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) to launch multiple

cross border projects a year. Come learn about how to conduct advanced

searches, cross-reference data across multiple leaks, and create your

own investigation workspace — including building network diagrams and

timelines. Make use of the billions of records that OCCRP Aleph hosts

for your next investigation.

This session is going to be a demo, there's a deep dive hands-on session directly following.

Speaker

Jan Strozyk, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project 👇

Jan is OCCRP's senior data editor and co-head of the Research & Data team. He coordinates data analysis and research and works on data-driven investigations.

On Twitter: @jlstro

hands-on

Findings and using undocumented APIs

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

This tutorial will introduce reporters to an exciting and often overlooked data source found on every website. You will learn how to find and use hidden APIs as a reporting resource, and hear about how this data source has been used in past reporting. This session is for reporters who want to diversify their data sources. You don't need to write code: we'll teach participants to find hidden APIs in your web browser, but knowing some coding will let you to unlock detailed and rich datasets hidden in plain sight. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class. We'll be working off this scripted documented.

Speakers

Dhruv Mehrotra, WIRED 👇

Dhruv Mehrotra (he/him) is an investigative data reporter for WIRED. He uses technology to find, build, and analyze datasets for storytelling. Before joining WIRED, he worked for the Center for Investigative Reporting and was a researcher at New York University's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. At Gizmodo, he was on a team that won an Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting for their story Prediction: Bias. Mehrotra is based in New York.

On Twitter: @dmehro

Leon Yin, The Markup 👇

On Twitter: @leonyin

hands-on

Finding the story: Digging into nonprofits for fun and, um, profit

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

The IRS collects vast amounts of data on millions of hospitals, universities, cultural organizations and other nonprofit organizations. Most of that information is public. You can find it in IRS Form 990. We’ll use R to import and analyze some 990s, so bring your laptop. But you don’t need to know any R for this session and you’ll learn plenty about the nonprofit world.

This session is good for anyone who has some experience working with data. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Ronald Campbell, NBC Owned Television Stations 👇

Ronald Campbell is data editor for the NBC Owned Television Stations. He previously created the computer-assisted reporting program at the Orange County Register. He has won the IRE Award, the Loeb Award and placed in the Philip Meyer Award. He lives in Orange County, CA, with his wife and cat. When not getting frustrated with databases he gets frustrated hiking.

On Twitter: @campbellronaldw

hands-on

R 1: Intro to R and RStudio

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Jump into data analysis with R, the powerful open-source programming language. In this class we’ll cover R fundamentals and learn our way around the RStudio interface for using R.

This session is good for: People with a basic understanding of data analysis who are ready to go beyond spreadsheets.

Speaker

Ryann Jones, ProPublica 👇

On Twitter: @ryanngro

panel

Going beyond 'skills-based': contextualizing data journalism for students

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Educators

Description

Many of us who are teaching at the university level agree that data journalism courses must involve more than Excel, DataWrapper and programming languages. How can we add thoughtful analyses of the history of and contemporary issues within data journalism to hands-on data journalism courses? How can we better mesh standard skills learning with exploratory thinking on data availability, data collection and creative data? Get ideas on adding Mimi Onuoha, Teju Cole, Mona Chalabi and Catherine D'Ignazio to your syllabus, and share ideas with your fellow journalism educators!

Speakers

Meredith Broussard, New York University 👇

Meredith Broussard is an associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of New York University and the research director at the NYU Alliance for Public Interest Technology. She is the author of a new book, "More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech." Her research focuses on artificial intelligence in investigative reporting, with particular interests in AI ethics and using data analysis for social good.

On Twitter: @merbroussard

Nausheen Husain, Syracuse University 👇

Nausheen is a reporter, researcher and assistant professor at Syracuse University. She writes about Muslim communities and civil liberties issues, as well as data and documents-driven journalism.

On Twitter: @nausheenhusain

Mago Torres, OpenNews 👇

On Twitter: @magiccia

Lam Thuy Vo, Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism 👇

On Twitter: @lamthuyvo

panel

Mining financial disclosures

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

This panel will discuss the kinds of information that's available in SEC filings, from annual and quarterly reports to mergers and acquisitions, and how journalists can track down and use that information in our reporting.

Speakers

Noah Buhayar, Bloomberg News 👇

Noah Buhayar is a data editor at Bloomberg News, where he's worked since 2010 covering real estate and financial services.

On Twitter: @nbuhayar

Peniley Ramirez, Futuro Investigates/Futuro Media 👇

Emmy-award-winning investigative journalist, Peniley is the Executive Producer of Futuro Investigates and Special Projects at Futuro Media. Before, she worked as an investigative correspondent for Univision. Her reporting has led to government investigations in Latin America and the U.S. She worked on global investigative projects, such as "Panama Papers," and “Pandora Papers.” She graduated with a Master of Arts in Business and Economics Journalism at Columbia University.

On Twitter: @penileyramirez

Sara Silver, Quinnipiac University 👇

Sara Silver is Abelson professor of business journalism at Quinnipiac University and trains newsrooms to follow the money. She covered the implosion of telecom equipment giants for The Wall Street Journal. Her award-winning series for the Financial Times kept Mexico’s would-be Evita from diverting charity to her campaign to succeed her husband as president. Silver covered Mexico and New York for The Associated Press and was a Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia.

On Twitter: @SaraSilver7

John West, The Wall Street Journal 👇

John West reports the news with code at The Wall Street Journal, where his work has won multiple awards and where he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. He holds an MFA in writing from the Bennington Writing Seminars and degrees in philosophy and music performance from Oberlin College and Conservatory. His first book, "Lessons and Carols," is forthcoming in May 2023.

On Twitter: @johnwest

panel

Beyond the Dobbs story: Public health coverage in a post-Roe America

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

In this session, panelists will share key data that they’ve relied on while reporting on the aftermath of the Dobbs decision to ultimately tell a larger story about public health, including from the CDC and WHO on maternal mortality, the AMA on OB/GYN training and workforces, and more. Speakers will point reporters to those sources and encourage them to think about new ways to tell the post-Dobbs story, with angles that go beyond abortion.

Speakers

Annette Choi, CNN 👇

Annette Choi is a data and graphics editor at CNN digital, currently covering abortion and gun violence.

On Twitter: @annette_choi

Kristen Hwang, CalMatters 👇

Kristen Hwang is an award-winning health policy reporter and documentary filmmaker. She earned dual master's degrees in journalism and public health at UC Berkeley studying water quality and other environmental exposures. She uses spatial and data analysis to examine the intersection of public health, policy and social justice. Her work has appeared in publications like CalMatters, the New York Times, USA Today, the Desert Sun and more.

On Twitter: @khwangreports

Elizabeth Nash, Guttmacher Institute 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

panel

How to use investigative techniques to hold algorithms and artificial intelligence accountable

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Equity & inclusion

Description

Algorithms are everywhere, but many journalists too often defer to companies who built AI-powered tools. When journalists use investigative methods to test the tools themselves, many AI products underperformed, or led to dangerous and discriminatory outcomes. In this panel, we will discuss what methods journalists can use to hold AI accountable - even those who work as freelance reporters.

Speakers

Hilke Schellmann, New York University/independent journalist 👇

Hilke Schellmann is an Emmy-award winning freelance investigative reporter covering artificial intelligence for the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian. She is also a journalism professor at New York University.

On Twitter: @hilkeschellmann

Maddy Varner, The Markup 👇

Maddy Varner is an investigative data journalist at The Markup, where she extracts datasets from public documents and databases and analyzes them to tell stories about how technology impacts areas like labor, education and politics. Prior to The Markup, she was a researcher at ProPublica, where she was on a team that won a Loeb Award for Beat Reporting in 2017 for “Monetizing Hate,” a series of stories that examined Facebook’s ad practices.

On Twitter: @tenuous

pre-registration - hands-on

First Visual Story

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: Sylvan Park – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $40 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Learn how America’s top news organizations escape rigid content-management systems to publish custom graphics on deadline.

Take this class to get hands-on experience in every stage of the development process, writing JavaScript, HTML and CSS within a Node.js framework. You’ll start with data from a real-life Los Angeles Times analysis. You won’t stop until you’ve crafted a custom presentation and deployed a working application on the World Wide Web.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Laptops will be provided.

Workshop prerequisites: If you have a good attitude and know how to take a few code crashes in stride, you are qualified for this class. If you’re a little scared, that’s a good thing. You’re ready for this.

Speakers

James Thomas, The New York Times 👇

James Thomas is a software engineer on the Interactive News team at The New York Times. He often works on media-rich projects that involve reader-generated content, and works closely with editors early in the conception of stories that use the digital tools we build on INT. His reporting often examines our cultural habits around music, movement and public space.

On Twitter: @nerdishtendency

Ben Welsh, Reuters 👇

Ben Welsh is the News Application Editor at Reuters and a fellow at the DePaul University Center for Journalism Integrity & Excellence

On Twitter: @palewire

Aida Ylanan, Los Angeles Times 👇

Aida is a journalist at the Los Angeles Times. She works on the data and graphics desk, specializing in data analysis and visualization. A SoCal native, she graduated from UCLA, where she studied statistics and English.

On Twitter: @a1daylanan

pre-registration - hands-on

Exploring data in R with the Tidyverse

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 1 – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $75 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

⚠️ This session will take place over multiple days.

💪 Skill level: Advanced

Description

Learn how to use the tidyverse, a collection of R packages, to help you make your data journalism more efficient, stronger and more fun. Learn how to import, clean, analyze and plot data for your stories. If you want to modernize your R workflow with dplyr, tidyr, readr, ggplot2, tibble and purr, this class is for you. This workshop assumes some familiarity with R and RStudio, or programming experience in another language (e.g., Python or JavaScript), but will start from the beginning with tidyverse principles.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Laptops will be provided for the training.

Workshop prerequisites: You should be comfortable working with R and RStudio and be familiar with basic data analysis.

Speakers

Liz Lucas, IRE & NICAR 👇

Andrew Ba Tran, Washington Post 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

pre-registration - hands-on

Digging into data for stories: A crash course in spreadsheets

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 9 a.m. – 5:45 p.m. CT (420m)

🚪 Room: 12 South 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $75 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

Get started using data in your stories with IRE's mini-boot camp. In this 6-hour, hands-on workshop, IRE’s experienced trainers will start with the basics of navigating Google Sheets and using formulas, then walk you through sorting, filtering and aggregating data with pivot tables to find story ideas. You'll come away with a solid base for analyzing data in your newsroom, including how to find and request data, identify and clean dirty data, find story ideas and make your work ironclad. We’ll also provide you with our detailed boot camp materials to help keep you on track long after you leave the conference.

Workshop prerequisites: There are no prerequisites for this workshop and beginners are welcome. This workshop is good for those wanting to get started analyzing data for stories.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop for the training and must have a Google account.

Speakers

David Herzog, IRE-Missouri School of Journalism 👇

David Herzog is a veteran investigative reporter, data journalist, and educator. He's a professor at the Missouri School of Journalism, where he serves as the director of data services and research for IRE.

On Twitter: @davidherzog

Laura Moscoso, IRE & NICAR 👇

Laura Moscoso is a Puerto Rican journalist and training director for IRE & NICAR. Laura is a professor focusing on data, visualization tools and media literacy.

On Twitter: @LauraC_Moscoso

Adam Rhodes, IRE & NICAR 👇

On Twitter: @byadamrhodes

Sessions starting at 10:15 a.m. CT

commons

Mental health for journalists and investigators

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Edgehill – Meeting Space Level 2

Description

Researching and working on sensitive subjects can have a very heavy toll on your mental health. By talking about it, we hope to create a safe space for other researchers and journalists, letting them know it’s okay to have certain feelings, and provide some suggestions for how to deal with them.

Speakers

Giancarlo Fiorella, Bellingcat 👇

Giancarlo is a researcher/trainer at Bellingcat. He is also a PhD candidate at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies at the University of Toronto.

On Twitter: @gianfiorella

Annique Mossou, Bellingcat 👇

Annique Mossou is a trainer and researcher for Bellingcat. Previously she was part of an OSINT-team of the Dutch National Police, where she specialised in online jihadist propaganda. At Bellingcat, she focuses on the world of mis- and disinformation, conspiracies and Ukraine.

On Twitter: @questiionn01

demo

Sneak peek of Google's new PDF-busting reporting tool

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

Have you ever received a 300-page PDF containing a large table, printed from a spreadsheet and then scanned? Have you ever had a large pile of similarly-structured scanned documents (for example, police incident reports) and wondered “I wish I could get all this data into a spreadsheet”? Well, a new feature of Google Journalist Studio’s Pinpoint helps you do just that. Learn what it’s good for, how to use it, and how to get access to its beta program.

Speaker

Shlomo Urbach, Google 👇

Urbach is a senior software engineer with a diverse technological background who has been at Google for 15 years. In the past few years, he has worked on tools for investigative journalists. Urbach is the technical lead for the Pinpoint Extract Structured Data tool, and he is a huge fan of investigative journalism.

demo

Showcase: Big Local Data tools

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

A lightning-round showcase of innovative newsroom tools that can help you manage mass FOIAs, automate web scraping, analyze large document dumps with artificial intelligence and track how special interests influence statehouse legislation. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Serdar Tumgoren, Stanford University 👇

Serdar teaches data journalism at Stanford University. He is passionate about open-source tools and civic data-gathering efforts that help reporters tell local stories.

On Twitter: @zstumgoren

hands-on

Find public records and leaks: OCCRP Aleph

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

Description

Kickstart your investigations with OCCRP Aleph, the leak taming, company registry matching, huge dataset wrangling tool that enables the Organized Crime Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) to launch multiple cross border projects a year. Come learn about how to conduct advanced searches, cross-reference data across multiple leaks, and create your own investigation workspace — including building network diagrams and timelines. Make use of the billions of records that OCCRP Aleph hosts for your next investigation.

This session is good for: People who are beginner Aleph users or haven't used it in a while and are interested in new features and improvements. (You do not need to code.) Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Jan Strozyk, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project 👇

Jan is OCCRP's senior data editor and co-head of the Research & Data team. He coordinates data analysis and research and works on data-driven investigations.

On Twitter: @jlstro

hands-on

Scraping without programming

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

Yes, you can scrape data without using code -- in fact, all you need is Google Sheets! We'll be using Excel-type formulas (don't worry if you don't know what those are, either) to make simple scrapers that automatically pull data into Google Sheets. It’s the best way to get around clunky websites and unhelpful PIOs!

This session is good for: Beginners who want to start using data for their stories. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) for the training and must have a Google account.

Speaker

Samantha Sunne, ProPublica/WVUE 👇

On Twitter: @samanthasunne

hands-on

R 2: Data analysis and plotting

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

We'll use the tidyverse packages dplyr and ggplot2, learning how to sort, filter, group, summarize, join, and visualize to identify trends in your data. If you want to combine SQL-like analysis and charting in a single pipeline, this session is for you.

This session is good for: People who have worked with data operations in SQL or Excel and would like to do the same in R.

Speaker

Sean Mussenden, University of Maryland 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

panel

How to make your data story pop on TV

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

When you have a limited time to tell a story — like in TV news — sharing statistics, figures and data can be a challenge. Come to this session to learn how to share your data-driven stories on TV in dynamic but easy to understand ways.

Speakers

Rosie Cima, EW Scripps 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Josh Hinkle, KXAN/St. Edward's University 👇

On Twitter: @hinklej

Zaneta Lowe, WREG-TV 👇

Zaneta Lowe is an award-winning, veteran broadcast journalist with more than two decades of experience. For the last 11 years, she’s worked at WREG-TV in Memphis, TN where she’s currently Daybreak/Noon Anchor & Investigative Reporter. Zaneta’s work focuses on shining a light on problems, protecting families, and holding the powerful accountable.

On Twitter: @wregzaneta

panel

Supercharge your local investigation with machine learning

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

Description

Forget the buzzwords and AI hype. In this session you will learn how machine learning is helping local journalists produce groundbreaking investigations that without the technology would not be possible. From untangling a maze of subsidiaries to reveal the hedge funds that now control the single-family house market in North Carolina to uncovering the true scope of oil-well abandonment in Texas (and its associated human and environmental tragedies), the speakers will share how they combined machine learning with traditional reporting to pursue untold stories that affected the most vulnerable members of their communities. They will show and share the toolkits, templates, and data repositories they created to help other journalists reproduce their work, and will discuss tips for pitching and funding machine learning projects in small newsrooms.

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

Speakers

Clayton Aldern, Grist 👇

Clayton Aldern is a senior data reporter at Grist. He has contributed to reporting teams that have won multiple Online Journalism Awards, the Breaking Barriers Award from the Institute for Nonprofit News, and a National Edward R. Murrow Award. His book The Weight of Nature, on the relationships between climate change and brain health, is forthcoming from Dutton.

On Twitter: @compatibilism

Tyler Dukes, The News and Observer 👇

Tyler Dukes is an investigative reporter at The News and Observer in Raleigh, N.C., where he specializes in data and public records. He’s also an adjunct lecturer at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, teaching undergraduate courses in data journalism. In 2017, he completed a fellowship at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Prior to joining the N&O, he worked as an investigative reporter at WRAL News in Raleigh.

On Twitter: @mtdukes

Naveena Sadasivam, Grist 👇

Naveena Sadasivam is a staff writer covering the environment, energy, and climate change at Grist. She previously covered environmental issues at the Texas Observer, InsideClimate News, and ProPublica. She is a Livingston award finalist and has received awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, Society of Environmental Journalists, and the Radio Television Digital News Association for her reporting.

On Twitter: @NaveenaSivam

Lucia Walinchus, Eye on Ohio, the Ohio Center for Journalism 👇

On Twitter: @SoSaysLucia

panel

Using public data to uncover the hidden costs of the housing crisis

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

Almost half of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center say that housing is a significant problem where they live. Rental prices have gone up and, for many, homelessness is just an accident or health issue away. But, despite the importance of the problem and many sources of data available, some of the key questions regarding housing and homelessness remain unanswered.

One of the biggest challenges is understanding the role of landlords in rapidly gentrifying markets. San Francisco Chronicle’s Susie Neilson worked for months to uncover some of the biggest property owners in her city and will share the lessons of this work.

Gathering reliable data on homelessness is another major challenge facing journalists today. Amy DiPierro worked to explain what we know about how homelessness impacts children and schools, a side of this issue that many times is overlooked.

Speakers

Amy DiPierro, Center for Public Integrity 👇

Amy DiPierro is a data journalist at the Center for Public Integrity. She previously reported for The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, California and BusinessDen in Denver, Colorado.

Juan Pablo Garnham, Eviction Lab 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Susie Neilson, The San Francisco Chronicle 👇

On Twitter: @susieneilson

Sessions starting at 11:30 a.m. CT

commons

How and when to open-source your code and analysis

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Edgehill – Meeting Space Level 2

Description

How many times has a fellow journalist's decision to open source code and/or data saved your life? Thanks to the generosity of the news nerd community, many of us have been able to pull methods for cleaning, analyzing and visualizing data so we can develop our own code and stories.

But what considerations go into open sourcing data and analysis? If you've ever considered open sourcing your own code, join us for this important discussion with new and veteran open sourcers as we address topics including responsibility and culpability, documentation requirements, sustainability and security.

Speakers

Alexandra Kanik, Houston Chronicle / San Antonio Express-News 👇

Alexandra Kanik is the data visualization editor for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. Previously, she worked as a data journalist for Louisville Public Media and PublicSource.

On Twitter: @act_rational

Justin Myers, The Associated Press 👇

On Twitter: @myersjustinc

Libby Seline, San Antonio Express-News 👇

Libby Seline is a data visualization reporter for the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle. Before coming to San Antonio, she attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and worked for The New York Times, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Lincoln Journal Star.

On Twitter: @LibbySeline

demo

Finding criminal justice data in public records

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

Lucy Parsons Labs and the Chicago Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee have spent the last six years beginning to understand how police departments, jails and prisons rely on opacity to shield from public criticism harmful and often dangerous practices. Using Muckrock to send targeted and automated requests and DocumentCloud to store, annotate, and analyze documents using their many features and Add-Ons, Lucy Parsons Labs, IWOC and the Muckrock Foundation have begun to chip away at the secrecy.

The goal of this session is to help reporters understand the Muckrock and DocumentCloud platforms and how both offer great research opportunities, avenues for collaboration, and built in tools for document analysis to pull back the veil of secrecy as it relates to the treatment of those who are policed and incarcerated. Public data and records help us advocate for the policed & incarcerated and continue on our pathway to abolition. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Sanjin Ibrahimovic, MuckRock 👇

demo

Investigating the big business of medical marijuana cards: questionable health claims, weak oversight, unfair rules and 1 million certification records

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

The investigative series Cannabis Card Game from Spotlight PA revealed serious flaws with Pennsylvania's medical marijuana program and deceptive practices by businesses that offer to connect patients to physicians. Reporter Ed Mahon will offer a behind-the-scenes look at how he investigated medical claims on more than 60 business websites, analyzed more than 1 million records of medical marijuana certifications, reviewed thousands of pages of public records and lawsuits and won a court battle against his state's health department. This reporting had an impact, but it was also possible with relatively simple data tools, which Mahon will discuss. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Edward Mahon, Spotlight PA 👇

Ed Mahon is an investigative reporter for Spotlight PA, where he's covered addiction treatment, the opioid epidemic and the big business of medical marijuana cards. His reporting has earned national recognition from the Institute for Nonprofit News, the Online News Association and the Livingston Awards for Young Journalists. He's worked in newsrooms across Pennsylvania, including as the state Capitol reporter for NPR affiliate stations.

On Twitter: @edmahonreporter

hands-on

The international money trail

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: International

Description

Participants will combine their financial analysis skills with open search techniques to find the foreign filings of global financial firms, U.S. hedge funds and fraudulent companies in this workshop with Quinnipiac University professor and investigative journalist Sara Silver. The class will retrace a fraud at a Greek luxury goods chain using the filings of a U.K. subsidiary, use EU filings to shed light on secretive U.S. hedge funds and examine the charitable giving of a Mexican foundation serving as a campaign war chest. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Sara Silver, Quinnipiac University 👇

On Twitter: @SaraSilver7

hands-on

R 3: Gathering and cleaning data

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Learn how to use R to scrape data from web pages, access APIs and transform the results into usable data. This session will also focus on how to clean and structure the data you've gathered in preparation for analysis using tidyverse packages.

This session is good for: People who have used R and have a basic understanding of how to retrieve data from APIs.

Speaker

Sean Mussenden, University of Maryland 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

panel

Navigating the federal FOIA long game

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Public records

Description

The Freedom of Information Act can serve as a gateway to vital information about how the federal government is operating at the national, state, and local levels, but too often journalists are stonewalled — sometimes for years — when requesting records under the law. This session would cover strategies to find success in the FOIA long game: from how to request expedited processing, make progress using what's available, and stay motivated while pursuing records, to where to find free legal resources and support to craft administrative appeals and take legal action to compel agencies to comply with the law.

This session was planned in collabration with Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Beryl Lipton, Electronic Frontier Foundation 👇

Beryl Lipton is an investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation focused on government transparency and law enforcement surveillance technology. Beryl has extensive experience using freedom of information laws and large-scale public records campaigns in her research, and she enjoys sharing what’s she’s learned with others. Beryl is a board member for Boston’s Spare Change News and contributes to Gannett New York’s work accessing police disciplinary and other public safety records.

On Twitter: @_blip_

Adam Marshall, RCFP 👇

On Twitter: @a_marshall_plan

Brian Rosenthal, The New York Times 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

panel

Best practices when teaching investigative and data journalism classes

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Educators

Description

Investigative and data journalism courses in colleges and universities have taken off at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Join this session of veteran educators to learn and share best practices and ideas for effective teaching of these kinds of courses to the investigators/data journalists of tomorrow.

Speakers

Meredith Broussard, New York University 👇

On Twitter: @merbroussard

Sarah Cohen, Arizona State University 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Brant Houston, University of Illinois and Investigate Midwest 👇

On Twitter: @branthouston

Nausheen Husain, Syracuse University 👇

Nausheen is a reporter, researcher and assistant professor at Syracuse University. She writes about Muslim communities and civil liberties issues, as well as data and documents-driven journalism.

On Twitter: @nausheenhusain

Maggie Mulvihill, Boston University 👇

On Twitter: @maggiemulvihill

Hilke Schellmann, New York University/independent journalist 👇

On Twitter: @hilkeschellmann

Jonathan Soma, Columbia University 👇

On Twitter: @dangerscarf

Derek Willis, University of Maryland 👇

On Twitter: @derekwillis

panel

Telling data stories in audio

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

Numbers are notoriously confusing on the air, so here’s an hour of tips and tricks to accurately and effectively share your findings on the radio or in a TV broadcast.

Speakers

Justin Hicks, Louisville Public Media 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Kelly Kenoyer, WHQR 👇

Kelly Kenoyer is a reporter and host at WHQR, the NPR affiliate in Wilmington, North Carolina. She produces long-form and investigative podcasts alongside short-form work.

On Twitter: @kelly_kenoyer

Ben Schachtman, WHQR Public Media 👇

Ben Schachtman is a journalist and editor with a focus on local government accountability. He began reporting for Port City Daily in the Wilmington area in 2016 and took over as managing editor there in 2018. He’s a graduate of Rutgers College and later received his master's degree from New York University and his PhD from State University New York-Stony Brook, both in English Literature. He loves spending time with his wife and playing rock 'n' roll very loudly.

On Twitter: @ben_schachtman

Natasha Senjanovic, Independent journalist 👇

Natasha Senjanovic is an award-winning journalist covering vulnerable populations from a data- and trauma-informed perspective. She spent 15 years in Italy and since returning to the US has served as a host/reporter for Nashville Public Radio (2016-19), produced a Pulitzer Center-backed project (2021) and was a temporary editor with MPR News (2021-22). Her work has appeared on NPR, WPLN, APM, and MPR. She speaks four languages and her awards include a Regional Murrow.

On Twitter: @nsenjanovic

panel

Keeping it local: Inspiring regional reporters to use data journalism tools for their stories

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

In this session, we'll talk about how national outlets can work with local reporters to produce data stories for their own communities.

Speakers

Helena Bengtsson, Gota Media 👇

On Twitter: @HelenaBengtsson

Cheryl Phillips, Big Local News 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Sessions starting at 2:15 p.m. CT

commons

Data blitz

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

Description

Like Lightning Talks, but for data. Five presenters will guide you through their favorite datasets.

To propose presenting a dataset, please fill out this form by February 3.

Speaker

Jeremy Singer-Vine, The Data Liberation Project 👇

Jeremy Singer-Vine runs the Data Liberation Project and writes Data Is Plural, a weekly newsletter.

demo

Sharing your rapid Python analysis with the newsroom using Google Sheets

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

Want to have fast analysis ready for reporters right when an anticipated data set is released? Learn how to connect your python analysis to reporter-friendly Google Sheets. At The Texas Tribune, we created a pipeline that quickly cleans and analyses data to create Google Sheets for reporters to use in their breaking news stories the minute the data is released. I'll share tips and tricks on how you can adapt it for your newsroom. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Carla Astudillo, The Texas Tribune 👇

On Twitter: @carla_astudi

demo

Who's behind that website?

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

Reporting online today, journalists must battle with astroturf campaigns, fake news sites and sketchy shell companies to find out who is behind the story. Usually it leads to a frustratingly common question: Who is behind this website?

Using a range of tools (free and otherwise), we walk you through how to investigate the provenance and ownership of websites: how can you identify the scope and scale of the network it belongs to — if any? Who’s behind the site, now and in the past? Who are the main actors promoting this website? Where else does this site crop up?

While it is not always possible to fully unmask the owner of a site, using a thorough checklist of tools and techniques that we have used in real-world investigations, we can help you make sure to reveal as much as possible about a website, and potentially uncover important clues.

Speakers

Pri Bengani, Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School 👇

Pri Bengani is a senior computational fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism where she relies on computational techniques to research the digital media landscape, including partisan local news and the intersection of platform companies with the media.

On Twitter: @acookiecrumbles

Jon Keegan, The Markup 👇

Jon Keegan is an investigative data journalist at The Markup. Previously, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, researching signals of trust in online news and studying the role of AI in journalism. He also worked at The Wall Street Journal for 18 years, where he ran the interactive graphics team. On Mastadon: @jonkeegan@mastodon.social

On Twitter: @jonkeegan

hands-on

Stats in R

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Advanced

Description

Learn how to use R to spot trends and identify relationships in data using social science theories and methods. In this session, we will use R for statistical significance tests, cross-tabulations and linear regression.

This session is good for: Anyone who is comfortable working with spreadsheets and database managers and wants to learn how to do basic statistical analysis. Some experience with R will be helpful.

Speaker

Holly Hacker, Kaiser Health News 👇

Holly Hacker is data editor at Kaiser Health News in Washington, DC. Before that Holly worked at The Dallas Morning News as an investigative reporter focused on health care, education, housing and data analysis. She earned her master's degree at the University of Missouri while working at the NICAR database library, back when FoxPro was a thing.

On Twitter: @hollyhacker

hands-on

Using geographic data to find disparities in the news

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

🚂️ Track: Equity & inclusion

Description

The stories found in geographic data don’t affect everyone the same, and Census data can help reveal these inequities. POLITICO editor Sean McMinn will talk through how some examples of these stories, then will do a hands-on walkthrough to teach you how to:

- Find geographic data

- Combine Census demographic and shapefile data in QGIS

- Cross Census data with geocoded data

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you will need to have QGIS3 installed in order to participate.

Speaker

Sean McMinn, POLITICO 👇

On Twitter: @shmcminn

hands-on

PDF processing with command-line tools

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Sylvan Park – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

This class seeks to help you solve a common problem in journalism: Data stored in PDFs. We'll first walk through extracting text from a computer-generated PDF using a command-line tool. Then we'll step up to Optical Character Recognition, or OCR, to work on freeing data from image files.

This session is good for: People with experience using their computer's command-line interface.

Speaker

Chad Day, The Wall Street Journal 👇

Chad Day covers national politics for The Wall Street Journal and teaches data journalism at Georgetown University.

On Twitter: @ChadSDay

panel

Which data viz should I use and why?

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

We'll explore ways to think about choosing charts to tell your data's story, and some best practices about what works best. And, no, that doesn't mean everything is a bar chart. In fact, we'll bring examples of inspirational data visualizations we guarantee Datawrapper can't do.

Speakers

Scott Klein, THE CITY 👇

Scott is the Chief Product Officer at THE CITY in New York City. He oversees the teams at the intersection of journalism and technology, including product management, engineering, interactive news, and data reporting. Before THE CITY, he helped start ProPublica and founded its award-winning news applications and data teams. He also co-founded DocumentCloud and sits on the board of MuckRock.

On Twitter: @kleinmatic

Erin Petenko, VTDigger 👇

Erin is the data and graphics reporter for VTDigger, bringing Vermont’s stories to life with data. She's also worked as a data reporter for NJ.com.

On Twitter: @EPetenko

Emilia Ruzicka, Stacker 👇

Emilia Ruzicka is a data journalist and designer. They currently live in Washington, D.C. and work for Stacker. Throughout their career, Emilia has worked for print news, radio stations, and digital media organizations to produce both written and multimedia stories with a focus on data-driven narratives. To learn more, please visit emiliaruzicka.com.

On Twitter: @EmiliaRuzicka

panel

Next steps after ‘no’: What to do when your records request is denied

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 2:15 – 3:15 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Public records

Description

You’ve asked for the public information that will form the basis of your reporting, but government agencies are delaying responses to your records requests, or denying them altogether. What now? This session would cover tips and tricks for journalists who want to understand ways to help federal, state, and local public agencies respond to their records requests more quickly, appeal public records denials, look for records that might be public in other places, and everything in between.

This session was planned in collabration with Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Kate Howard, Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting 👇

Kate Howard (she/her) is an investigative editor for Reveal, and a member of IRE’s board of directors.

Previously, she was managing editor at the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting. She spent nearly 14 years as a reporter, including stints at The Tennessean, The Florida Times-Union and the Omaha World-Herald. Her work has been a finalist for a Peabody Award and the recipient of two national Investigative Reporters & Editors Awards. Howard is based in Louisville, Kentucky.

On Twitter: @JournoKateH

Jason Leopold, Bloomberg News 👇

On Twitter: @JasonLeopold

Gunita Singh, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press 👇

Gunita is an attorney at RCFP where she litigates against state and federal agencies using freedom of information laws and helps reporters with records requests. She has co-authored two publications analyzing the role of news media in providing information about COVID-19. Gunita was previously an attorney at Property of the People, a DC-based FOIA operation. She received her J.D. from Georgetown and serves on the board of LION Publishers.

On Twitter: @gunita_singh

Phil Williams, WTVF 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

pre-registration - hands-on

R: Introduction to statistics

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 2:15 – 5:45 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 1 – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $40 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Statistics can help you find newsworthy patterns by measuring relationships. This class will help you correctly interpret and report using methods such as correlation, linear regression, and t-test. It will help you visualize data and apply statistical significance. This class is for anyone with some spreadsheet knowledge and a little exposure to R Studio.

Speaker

Norm Lewis, University of Florida 👇

Norm Lewis is an associate professor of journalism at the University of Florida, where he has been since getting his doctorate in 2007. Before that, he was a journalist for 25 years, ranging from editor of smaller dailies to The Washington Post financial desk. In addition to creating five data journalism courses at UF, he conducts statistics-based social science research into news culture for peer-reviewed journals.

On Twitter: @bikeprof

pre-registration - hands-on

Practical machine learning for everyone

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 2:15 – 5:45 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $40 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Advanced

Description

Whether you're interested in classifying images, sorting documents, summarizing text, transcribing audio, or a million other topics, machine learning is here to help!

Learn to set up practical machine learning pipelines in minutes: we'll train custom models, build easy-to-use web apps, host private APIs and more through the adorably-named Hugging Face. Whatever your level of technical comfort, we'll set you up with a system that works perfectly just for you.

Beyond showing off all our fun new tricks, we'll also look at the tradeoffs between ease-of-use versus diving deep into the innards of the machine. What nuance do we miss when we shovel the details off to a convenient tool?

You'll leave this session with a dozen new tools in your toolbox – at all levels of the tech tree – along with the confidence (or necessary suspicion) in wielding these tools in the newsroom.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to this training.

Speaker

Jonathan Soma, Columbia University 👇

On Twitter: @dangerscarf

Sessions starting at 3:30 p.m. CT

commons

AI Art Creation: From the Classroom to the Newsroom

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Edgehill – Meeting Space Level 2

Description

When crediting Midjourney for the two illustrations included in a newsletter produced for The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel faced a backlash from Twitter users who thought the publication tried to cut its art budget. Since the release of art creation bots, many artists have voiced their concerns about the use of their artwork for data training purposes. On a different note, the quality of illustrations generated by the bots has not even come close to the professional journalism standards held by many newsrooms.

At Kansas State University, while journalism students are excited about generating graphics with the assistance of AI bots, the Kansas State Collegian editorial board has quite a lot of concerns. In this session, the news staff will share their perspectives on why they haven't rushed to adopt AI art creation tools in their newsroom yet. Tips on how to work with the bots will also be shared.

Speakers

Huyen Nguyen, AQ Miller School of Media and Communication, Kansas State University 👇

Huyen Nguyen (Ph.D., Ohio University, 2020) is a teaching assistant professor at Kansas State University. She teaches courses in immersive storytelling, interactive journalism design, creative design and content distribution. Her research interests include media economics and visual communication. Her works have been presented at many national and regional conferences in America. Prior to entering academia, she was a magazine reporter and editor in Vietnam.

On Twitter: @ntnhuyen

Carter Schafer, Kansas State University 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Zoe Schumacher, Kansas State Collegian 👇

I am a sophomore in Marketing and Graphic Design at Kansas State University. As the Page Design Chief for the Collegian, I communicate our stories to our students through interesting, compelling design and artwork.

On Twitter: @zoe_schu

Kelsey Volk, Kansas State Collegian 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

demo

Introducing moneyinpolitics.wtf, a new campaign-finance dictionary made by and for data journalists

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

moneyinpolitics.wtf is an open-source website that aims to be America's most comprehensive glossary of political fundraising jargon. Come check it out and tell us how it could improve — and maybe even be useful one day. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speakers

Agustin Armendariz, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists 👇

Agustin Armendariz is ICIJ's senior data reporter. Prior to joining ICIJ Agustin was a reporter at The New York Times. He's also worked for the Center for Investigative Reporting, San Diego Union-Tribune and the Center for Public Integrity. Most people call him Augie.

On Twitter: @agustin_icij

Anupama Narayanswamy, The Washington Post 👇

Anu Narayanswamy is the deputy data director at the Washington Post. She works with data reporters covering climate, national politics and the D.C. metro area.

On Twitter: @anu_narayan

Ben Welsh, Reuters 👇

Ben Welsh is the News Application Editor at Reuters and a fellow at the DePaul University Center for Journalism Integrity & Excellence

On Twitter: @palewire

Derek Willis, University of Maryland 👇

On Twitter: @derekwillis

hands-on

Finding the story: Policing and crime data

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

There’s a lot of data out there on policing and crime but so much of it is bad for a variety of reasons. In this session we’ll separate the good from the bad and discuss stories just waiting to be written in your community.

Speaker

Steven Rich, The Washington Post 👇

Steven Rich is a database editor for investigations at The Washington Post. He was a member of IRE's board of directors from 2015-2021.

On Twitter: @dataeditor

hands-on

Scraping without programming (repeat)

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

Description

This session is good for: Beginners who want to start using data for their stories. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) for the training and must have a Google account.

Speaker

Samantha Sunne, ProPublica/WVUE 👇

On Twitter: @samanthasunne

hands-on

Datasette: An ecosystem of tools for exploring data and collaborating on data projects

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Sylvan Park – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

Datasette is a growing ecosystem of tools for exploring and publishing data. With Datasette you can take raw data from a variety of different formats, import it into a SQLite-backed web interface, explore it, visualize it, map it and then publish it along with an API to enable further custom development.

This workshop will introduce Datasette using Datasette Cloud, a new hosted service that allows you to run the tools and collaborate on data projects with members of your team. Topics covered will include:

- Using Datasette Cloud to upload, explore and analyze data from a variety of sources

- Using full-text search and facets to quickly analyze large and complex datasets

- Visualizing numeric and geographic data using Datasette plugins

- Running Datasette and associated tools on your own machine using the command line

This session is good for anyone. Basic familiarity with SQL and the command line is helpful but not necessary.

Speaker

Simon Willison, Independent journalist 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

panel

Suspicion machine: Expose algorithmic bias in welfare fraud detection

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

Description

With the training data, the code and the final model file for an AI system designed to flag people within the Rotterdam welfare system for potential fraud, we have had an unprecedented opportunity to prove how one of these systems turn people’s vulnerabilities against them. We’ll take you through the algorithm, the methodology and the steps to run your own experiment to prove algorithmic bias-and how we obtained it all in the first place.

Speakers

Eva Constantaras, Lighthouse Reports 👇

On Twitter: @evaconstantaras

Gabriel Geiger, Lighthouse Reports 👇

Gabriel Geiger is an Amsterdam-based investigative journalist specializing in surveillance and algorithmic accountability reporting. His work often grapples with issues of inequality and technology from a global lens. He is currently a retainer at Lighthouse Reports and was previously a weekly contributor for VICE’s Motherboard. His reporting can be found in VICE, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, NRC, and Mediapart.

On Twitter: @gabriels_geiger

Dhruv Mehrotra, WIRED 👇

On Twitter: @dmehro

panel

Tools for statehouse reporting

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

Providing journalists who write on the statehouse/state level with the best and most useful data tools & public records requests to crack open statehouses. We'll explore national tools like FollowTheMoney.org, and also do quick tutorials of different states' lobbying, campaign finance and financial disclosure websites. We'll recommend helpful datasets, offer examples of data-based stories, and talk about ways to make data/the investigative mindset a central focus of your statehouse coverage.

Speakers

Jeremy Finley, WSMV-TV 👇

Jeremy Finley is the chief investigative reporter at WSMV-TV and a two-time IRE award winner. He’s also a novelist whose books have been featured by NPR, People Magazine and the New York Post, and the co-host of a PBS program "A Word on Words" which spotlights the works of authors. He lives with his wife and daughters in Nashville, TN. His heroes are journalists, so he already likes you.

On Twitter: @JFinleyreports

Phil Williams, WTVF 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Yue Yu, Bridge Michigan 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

panel

Beyond checking the facts: Tracing the spread of misinformation to the source

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

Discuss ongoing research to trace and group pieces of misinformation to their source. Fact-checkers tend to focus on the pieces of misinformation as individual pieces of content, however, it has been shown in previous research that most misinformation originates from a small number of malicious sources who then actively spread it to a wider audience.

Speaker

Christopher Guess, Duke University Reporters' Lab 👇

Christopher is a journalist and computer scientist who leads technology development at Duke University's Reporters' Lab focusing on misinformation and fact-checking. Previously he has been an ICFJ Knight Fellow at OCCRP based in Europe for multiple years and began his journalism career as a photojournalist follows by cofounder numerous tech start ups in New York.

On Twitter: @cguess

panel

Census 2020: Get ready for Round 2

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

Description

The Demographic Profile and Demographic and Housing Characteristics File for the 2020 Census are now (this time they really mean it) due for release in May 2023. By the time of the conference, we should know how accurate the data will be - a big consideration because of the Census Bureau's evolving privacy protection rules. In any case, however, the May releases will almost certainly be the best part of the 2020 Census.

Speakers

Ronald Campbell, NBC Owned Television Stations 👇

On Twitter: @campbellronaldw

Meghan Hoyer, The Washington Post 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Paul Overberg, The Wall Street Journal 👇

On Twitter: @poverberg

Sessions starting at 4:45 p.m. CT

commons

Code Buddies: Get help on your data project

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

Need help on a data project? Having trouble figuring out how to use that cool tool you learned about in another session? Just want to network with some other news nerds? Stop by this session and get one-on-one help from experienced data journalists who would be delighted to help you solve your problems.

Speaker

Alexandra Kanik, Houston Chronicle / San Antonio Express-News 👇

Alexandra Kanik is the data visualization editor for the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express-News. Previously, she worked as a data journalist for Louisville Public Media and PublicSource.

On Twitter: @act_rational

hands-on

Finding the story: Higher education data

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

💪 Skill level: Beginner

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

Interested in uncovering enterprising higher education stories in your community but aren’t exactly sure where to start? In this session, we’ll explore data sets that you can use today to dig into college finances, the student experience and safety.

This session is good for people who are comfortable using spreadsheets.

Speaker

Alex Richards, Syracuse University 👇

Alex Richards is an assistant professor at Syracuse University. Prior to his current role, he was the deputy investigations editor at NerdWallet and has been a reporter and editor at news organizations including the Chicago Tribune, The Chronicle of Higher Education and the Las Vegas Sun. He's also a former IRE training director.

On Twitter: @alexrichards

hands-on

311: The 411 on how to report on your city’s infrastructure issues — and how this data can uncover stories on gentrification

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: 5 Points 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

311 data, or “customer service” data from your city’s citizen complaints department, can help you feed the daily/online beast while also feeding into bigger-picture stories. In this end-of-day Saturday session, you won’t have to lift a mouse finger: We’ll go through examples of stories done using this data, talk about how you can do the same, and you’ll leave with a long list of potential story ideas.

This session is good for: People comfortable with Python and Jupyter notebook. Taking or having taken "introduction to Python for data analysis" or "first Python notebook" is strongly recommended. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) and a free Google account to participate in this class.

Speaker

Janelle O'Dea, The Center for Public Integrity 👇

Janelle O'Dea started recently as a data reporter for the Center for Public Integrity after five years in the same role at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She likes Python, pandas and cats.

On Twitter: @jayohday

hands-on

Gathering data with APIs

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Sylvan Park – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

In this hands-on session, we'll learn how to use data from Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to enhance reporting and augment data from other sources. This session will cover how APIs fit in with other sources of data, a basic understanding of the web technologies that make them work, using some desktop tools to fetch data from API endpoints and sharing useful APIs and tools for journalism.

Some basic data analysis skills and knowledge of coding concepts is helpful, but not required.

Speaker

Geoff Hing, The Marshall Project 👇

On Twitter: @geoffhing

networking

Networking: Women journalists

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Edgehill – Meeting Space Level 2

🚂️ Track: Networking

Description

Mix and mingle, meet friends old and new, and build your professional community in this fun and informal networking session.

This session is for people who identify as women.

Speakers

Jennifer LaFleur, Center for Public Integrity 👇

Jennifer LaFleur is a senior editor at The Center for Public Integrity. She joined CPI from the Investigative Reporting Workshop. She also teaches at American University.

On Twitter: @j_la28

Linly Lin, Bloomberg News 👇

Linly Lin is a data journalist with Bloomberg News, now based in San Francisco. She enjoys being creative and leveraging technology to achieve journalistic goals.

On Twitter: @theLinlyShow

panel

Public records and data to request for (almost) any beat

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 2 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Public records

Description

From criminal justice and health, to education and the environment, reporters tackling a variety of subjects can obtain revealing public records and data beyond the basics with the right skills. Come to this session to (briefly) learn about using federal and research/restricted datasets, getting public records on private companies, requesting records to find more records to request, building relationships to get data and more. We'll include examples of both short and long-term stories and offer resources and inspiration for your post-NICAR hunts for records.

Speakers

Amy Fan, Scripps News 👇

Amy Fan is a investigative data reporter at Scripps News in Washington DC. She's contributed to pieces on a variety of topics, ranging from spam texts, to sex education, to gun violence, and more. Prior to joining Scripps, she was a research assistant at MIT Sloan working on consumer and public finance projects. Amy is a native Houstonian and very excited to be at her first NICAR.

On Twitter: @amyafan

Mike Reicher, The Seattle Times 👇

Mike Reicher is an investigative reporter for The Seattle Times. Previously, he was a data reporter on the I-Team at the Tennessean, where his stories exposed safety lapses that led to worker deaths in Nashville’s booming construction industry and showed how attorneys earned millions while wrongfully denying disability claims. He twice won the top investigative award from the Tennessee Associated Press. Mike is a graduate of UCLA and the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

On Twitter: @mreicher

K. Sophie Will, CQ Roll Call 👇

K. Sophie Will is CQ Roll Call's congressional committees reporter and Utah Investigative Journalism Project's Alicia Patterson fellow. Previously, she was the national parks reporter for the USA Today network through Report for America. The award-winning Utah native graduated from Boston University with bylines in the Deseret News, the Boston Globe, the Associated Press, Thomson Reuters, HuffPost, WGBH and more.

On Twitter: @ksophiewill

panel

Building an interactive map in the newsroom: How to bring skills and talent together

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

Unlike past conflicts, the global public can follow the war in Ukraine in real time. Our interactive map tracks the events of Russia’s invasion since 24th February 2022. It’s updated daily to show recent events, territorial gains and losses, satellite imagery, and the position of Russian troops. By clicking on the events, readers are presented with a more detailed description of the event, as well as images and direct links to sources.

The map was created by an interdisciplinary team of designers, data journalists, and developers. New information that is added to the map is verified by a team of data journalists and OSINT specialists. Below the map we explain the methodology behind the data and map design. The map is published on the main page of the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, often alongside other articles on the war, and provides readers with both an overview and with detailed, on-the-ground news of what is happening in Ukraine.

Here’s the German version – and the English version, which is translated by a bot and then checked by translators.

In this NICAR presentation I’ll discuss, how we were able to build this interactive map, the tools involved, the sources we used, and how many iterations we have released until now. Most importantly, how the map offers a new way for readers to discover the content – and sell subscriptions. One of the biggest challenges for the future will, of course, be to somehow secure the compatibility of the map with future technologies.

Speaker

Barnaby Skinner, Neue Zürcher Zeitung 👇

I manage the visuals department with data journalists, visuals journalists, software developers and OSINT reporters of the leading Swiss daily NZZ. Before that I built a team of data journalists and data scientists for Tamedia, another large Swiss publisher. I regularly teach data literacy skills and speak about digital transformation and the disruption of the news industry.

On Twitter: @barjack

panel

Gearing up for the 2024 election

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

Get a head start on your 2024 election coverage by learning about the campaign finance data you need to be looking at now. We'll also cover the wealth of information to dig into what goes beyond the traditional election data.

Speakers

Sandra Fish, Independent journalist 👇

Sandra Fish is a data journalist specializing in politics working primarily with the Colorado Sun, but also with OpenSecrets.

On Twitter: @fishnette

Jessica Huseman, Votebeat 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Aaron Mendelson, The Center for Public Integrity 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

panel

Behind the story: Data dives on the crime beat

🕙 Saturday (3/4) • 4:45 – 5:45 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Grand Ballroom 3 – Lobby Level

🚂️ Track: Behind the story

Description

Hear from reporters on how they gathered, cleaned, analyzed, visualized and told stories on covering cops, courts, crime and the intersections that connect them

Speakers

Josh McGhee, MindSite News 👇

Josh McGhee is an investigative reporter at MindSite News covering the intersection of criminal justice and mental health with an emphasis on public records and data reporting. He’s previously reported at DNAinfo Chicago, WVON, the Chicago Reporter and most recently Injustice Watch. He serves as the secretary for the Chicago Chapter of the NABJ.

On Twitter: @theVoiceofJosh

Lisa Pickoff-White, The California Reporting Project 👇

Lisa Pickoff-White is an award-winning investigative data reporter working with the California Reporting Project to turn use-of-force and police misconduct records into data and impactful reporting.

On Twitter: @pickoffwhite

Rachel Polansky, WANF CBS Atlanta News First 👇

Rachel is an Edward R. Murrow and Emmy award-winning investigative reporter at CBS in Atlanta, Ga. Rachel is also an adjunct journalism professor at UMKC. Rachel’s investigations have uncovered systemic failures, changed state laws and even led to indictments. Rachel’s work backs up her pledge to be a journalist who makes a difference and holds the powerful accountable. Prior to Atlanta, Rachel worked as an investigative reporter in Ohio, Florida and New York.

On Twitter: @rpolanskynews

Dylan Purcell, The Philadelphia Inquirer 👇

Dylan Purcell is a data reporter on the Philadelphia Inquirer's investigative team. He has covered a range of issues from fatal shootings by police, environmental hazards in public schools and newborn deaths following heart surgery at a for-profit hospital. He shared in the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was a finalist in 2019 and 2022.

On Twitter: @dylancpurcell

Sunday, 3/5

Sessions starting at 9 a.m. CT

hands-on

Google Sheets 1: Getting started with spreadsheets (repeat)

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

Description

This session is good for: Data beginners.

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you will need a free Google account to participate.

Speaker

Sandra Fish, Independent journalist 👇

Sandra Fish is a data journalist specializing in politics working primarily with the Colorado Sun, but also with OpenSecrets.

On Twitter: @fishnette

hands-on

Data of divides (repeat)

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Equity & inclusion

Description

Doing data-driven inequality stories often means using statistical tools.

Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Basic familiarity with R is a plus,

Download and install R and the free open-source version of R Studio for your operating system.

We'll be focusing on some basic statistical tools in R.

Please make sure you have installed the following packages:

install.packages("tidyverse") #Working with data

install.packages("knitr") #make code files

install.packages("psych") #stats

install.packages("tidycensus") #it will change your life

install.packages("lme4") #for logistic regression

install.packages("boot") #for logistic regression

install.packages("ggeffects") #for logistic regression

install.packages("DescTools") #for logistic regression

install.packages("varhandle") #for creating dummy variables

Speaker

Jennifer LaFleur, Center for Public Integrity 👇

Jennifer LaFleur is a senior editor at The Center for Public Integrity. She joined CPI from the Investigative Reporting Workshop. She also teaches at American University.

On Twitter: @j_la28

panel

Behind the story: Using data to report on (and for) your communities

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Behind the story

Description

Hear from reporters on how they gathered, cleaned, analyzed, visualized and told stories about, and for, the communities they serve.

Speakers

Suhail Bhat, THE CITY 👇

Suhail is THE CITY’s data reporter, responsible for bringing numbers to life. Previously, he was a data and graphics reporter at Louisville Public Media, where he covered the Ohio Valley and received the “Best Use of Data” award for his COVID-19 coverage from the Society of Professional Journalists, Louisville. Suhail is an engineer turned journalist, a graduate of Columbia Journalism School, and a former Reuters News correspondent.

On Twitter: @suhbhat

AJ Lagoe, KARE-TV 👇

A.J. Lagoe is an investigative reporter for KARE-TV in Minneapolis. His data-driven reporting routinely leads to criminal convictions and legislative hearings and has prompted numerous new federal and state laws. A.J. is a 2x IRE Award winner and has received many of journalism’s other highest honors including the George Polk, Peabody, National Murrow, and four Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University awards.

On Twitter: @AJInvestigates

Natasha Senjanovic, Independent journalist 👇

On Twitter: @nsenjanovic

panel

Early career roundtable

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 9 – 10 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

Whether it is a new investigation, a new beat or a new job, the choices we make early on can set us on the path to success or ruin. This session will offer practical tips on changing gears or media, source-development and finding the story others have missed.

Speakers

Josh Hinkle, KXAN/St. Edward's University 👇

On Twitter: @hinklej

Amir Khafagy, Documented 👇

On Twitter: @AmirKhafagy91

Nicole Vap, CBS News 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

pre-registration - hands-on

Web scraping with Python

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 3 – Meeting Space Level 2 (PC lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $40 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

💪 Skill level: Intermediate

Description

If you need data that's trapped on a website, writing some code to scrape the page could be your solution. This entry-level class will show you how to use the Python programming language to harvest information from websites into a data file. We'll introduce you to the command line and show you how to write enough code to fetch and parse content on the web.

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Laptops will be provided.

Workshop prerequisites: This class is programming for beginners. Some basic familiarity with Python and HTML is helpful but not required.

Speaker

Cody Winchester, IRE & NICAR 👇

Cody was a newspaper reporter, data specialist and web developer before joining IRE as a training director in 2017. He became the organization's tech director in 2022.

pre-registration - hands-on

Exploring data in R with the Tidyverse (continued)

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (210m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 1 – Meeting Space Level 2 (Mac lab)

⚠️ This session requires pre-registration and an additional fee of $75 to reserve a seat. Note: You must purchase a conference ticket before you can buy a ticket for this session.

⚠️ This session will take place over multiple days.

💪 Skill level: Advanced

Description

Preregistration is required and seating is limited. Laptops will be provided for the training.

Workshop prerequisites: You should be comfortable working with R and RStudio and be familiar with basic data analysis.

Speakers

Liz Lucas, IRE & NICAR 👇

Andrew Ba Tran, Washington Post 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Sessions starting at 10:15 a.m. CT

demo

Building your own AI editors

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

We spend a lot of time trying to replace journalists with machines, but maybe it's time we let editors in on the fun, too?

In this session, we'll look at several examples of building custom AI-assisted tools that play the editor for style and content in news stories. This might be as simple as encouraging a more accessible reading level, as deep as analyzing gender balance in sourcing, or as complex as managing editorial "anti-patterns" when reporting on crime or other hot-button issues.

Speaker

Jonathan Soma, Columbia University 👇

On Twitter: @dangerscarf

demo

How to analyze freely-available real estate data to tell your community's story

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

The housing market has come to dominate the news lately, as mortgage rates have risen in an attempt to fight inflation, and having the additional effect of cooling off the real estate market after years of meteoric rises in home values. This came after decades of a widespread housing shortage, which had driven up values already, all working together to push home affordability—and in many ways the American Dream—out of reach for many. Making sense of this through data is where we can help. Realtor.com provides free, near-realtime housing market data that can be used to tell this story at any level, from national or statewide trends, down to the real estate dynamics at city or even ZIP code level. In this session, we will show NICAR attendees how to get and use Realtor.com's data, so they can immediately begin producing thorough, data-driven reporting on the housing market. Attendees will be able to take what they learn in this session and generate analyses that use time-series data, supply-and-demand metrics and even pairing Realtor.com's data with Census Bureau data to produce correlations between the housing market and demographics, as well as creating maps that illustrate the data.

Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Evan Wyloge, Realtor.com 👇

Evan Wyloge is a data journalist at Realtor.com, where he covers real estate trends.

On Twitter: @EvanWyloge

hands-on

Google Sheets 2: Formulas & sorting (repeat)

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

Description

This session is good for: Anyone who has taken Google Sheets 1 or has been introduced to spreadsheets.

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you will need a free Google account to participate.

Speaker

Julie Christie, Resolve Philly 👇

Julie is the Director of Data and Special Projects at Resolve Philly, where she focuses on local government accountability, foster care, and supporting more than 29 Philly newsrooms with their data journalism. She’s passionate about pasta, solutions journalism, early career development, and data ethics.

On Twitter: @christiejules

panel

Tracking nursing home data amid state and federal staffing reforms

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 10:15 – 11:15 a.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

🚂️ Track: On the beat

Description

In this panel, speakers will provide an overview of the big reform discussions happening as well as key datasets reporters can use to investigate the extent of nursing home staffing problems in their state, as well as the campaign influence of the nursing home industry that has routinely fought reforms.

Speakers

Jayme Fraser, USA TODAY / Gannett 👇

On Twitter: @jaymekfraser

Sidnee King, Illinois Answers 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Caitlin McGlade, Arizona Republic 👇

On Twitter: @caitmcglade

Sessions starting at 11:30 a.m. CT

demo

CANCELED: Introduction to Flourish

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: SoBro – Meeting Space Level 1 (BYO laptop lab)

🚂️ Track: Tools & tech

Description

⚠️ This session has been canceled.

Learn how to build customized visualizations without coding in this demonstration on Flourish: a free online tool.

This session is good for anyone familiar with spreadsheets. No dataviz experience is required. Attendees will need to bring their own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class.

Speaker

Laura Moscoso, IRE & NICAR 👇

Laura Moscoso is a Puerto Rican journalist and training director for IRE & NICAR. Laura is a professor focusing on data, visualization tools and media literacy.

On Twitter: @LauraC_Moscoso

hands-on

Google Sheets 3: Filtering & pivot tables (repeat)

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Midtown 2 – Meeting Space Level 2 (BYO laptop lab)

Description

This session is good for: Anyone familiar with formulas, sorting and filtering in a spreadsheet program.

You must bring your own laptop (no tablets) to participate in this class, and you will need a free Google account to participate.

Speaker

Jessica Huseman, Votebeat 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

panel

Quick-hit investigations

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 1&2 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

One of IRE's most requested trainings: Strategies, story ideas, resources and tips for watchdog stories on a variety of beats. How to produce meaty enterprise stories that take days or weeks rather than months.

Speakers

Adam Rhodes, IRE & NICAR 👇

On Twitter: @byadamrhodes

Francisco Vara-Orta, IRE & NICAR 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

panel

What's next? Career advice for those looking for the next move

🕙 Sunday (3/5) • 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. CT (60m)

🚪 Room: Broadway Ballroom 3 – Meeting Space Level 1

Description

You've done it all -- beat reporter, enterprise desk, executive producer, investigative correspondent, editor, publisher, you name it! But what's next for your career? Join this roundtable discussion to hear from journalists who have been successful in navigating their next moves and instrumental in helping others take the big leap.

Speakers

AmyJo Brown, War Streets Media 👇

Speaker bio coming soon!

Tony Gonzales, Nashville Public Radio 👇

Tony Gonzalez oversees investigations and special projects at WPLN News and produces the Curious Nashville podcast. He’s worked in print, radio, and podcasting and has long been a mentor to collegiate and early-career journalists. He strives to tell memorably weird stories.

On Twitter: @tgonzalez

Charles Minshew, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 👇

On Twitter: @CharlesMinshew