NICAR 2024 schedule

Dozens of new, powerful (and sometimes scary) AI tools have already started transforming society and industries as a whole. What this means for news is an ongoing conversation. But some of these tools can be a boon to newsroom data journalists and coders. We walk through a dozen big and small tools, tips and tricks for utilizing AI in your daily workflows.

Speakers

Darla Cameron, The Texas Tribune

Darla Cameron is the managing editor for visual journalism for The Texas Tribune. She oversees the work of the photo and data visuals teams and works closely with the product, engineering and design teams to elevate the Tribune’s visual journalism.

Jeff Hargarten, Star Tribune

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

Connect: X

June Kim, Brown Institute for Media Innovation

June Kim is a data and climate reporter who covers climate and energy for MIT Technology Review. Previously, she has produced broadcast and digital content for media organizations in the United States and South Korea, covering topics such as public health, immigration and music. More recently, she reported on clean energy for Inside Climate News and created data-driven graphics for Scientific American.

Connect: Threads

Mike Reilley, UIC and JournalistsToolbox.ai

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Lots of early-career data and graphics journalists may find themselves working on a niche beat new to them, with complicated data, hard-to-find data sources, and a general need to have in-depth knowledge to excel in their data reporting. This session will provide a primer of how to build data-specific sources and contacts (including a tipsheet with some of this information for a range of beats), how to get your footing in a topic that's brand new, and how to emerge as an expert in your field.

Note: Journalist Fazil Khan was scheduled to speak on this panel before his untimely death Feb. 23. Friends and colleagues are making space at the conference to remember him on Friday, March 8, from 3:30 - 4:30 p.m. in room Laurel C.

Speakers

Fazil Khan (in memoriam), The Hechinger Report

Fazil Khan was a New York-based Indian data journalist who covered education for The Hechinger Report. His most recent work examined how prices at colleges have risen more for the lowest-income students than their wealthier peers. In October last year, he co-created a tool called "The College Welcome Guide" that helps prospective students assess how receptive colleges are to students from a variety of backgrounds, and mapped state laws that affect college students. Khan died Feb. 23 in an apartment fire in New York City, and he will be missed by his many friends and colleagues in the industry.

Bianca Pallaro, The City

Pallaro is a senior data reporter, responsible for conceiving and carrying out focused, in-depth data investigations that uncover violations of public trust and drive real-world impact. Previously, she worked at USA Today and The New York Times, focusing on data acquisition, analysis and visualization for long data-driven investigations. Before moving to the United States to pursue her Masters at Columbia University, she worked as a senior data reporter at La Nación.

Connect: X, GitHub, LinkedIn

Catherine Rentz, Independent Journalist/Filmmaker

Catherine is an investigative journalist and producer based in the Baltimore –Washington region. She has led long-form investigations for PBS FRONTLINE, ProPublica, New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Baltimore Sun and other outlets. Her work has won numerous awards such as the IRE Award for Investigations Triggered by Breaking News, the Online News Association Award for Explanatory Journalism, and her happy place is good ol' Excel.

Connect: Website, X

Paroma Soni, Politico

Paroma Soni is a data and graphics journalist covering trade and agriculture for Politico Pro. She worked previously as an associate visual journalist at FiveThirtyEight, as a fellow at Columbia Journalism Review and as a video producer at BuzzFeed India. A graduate of Columbia Journalism School, she is currently based in New York.

Connect: X, GitHub, LinkedIn

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The economic and racial segregation that we see in our country is not natural, but the result of decades of public policy. Zoning laws have made it difficult to build affordable housing and have excluded many from advantaged neighborhoods. In this session, we will talk about how to report on zoning issues and what data tools are available to explain the impact of these policies.

Speakers

Sara Bronin, Cornell University and National Zoning Atlas

Kriston Capps, Bloomberg CityLab

Juan Pablo Garnham, Eviction Lab

Matthew Mleczko, Eviction Lab, Princeton University

Matt is a doctoral candidate at Princeton University and a graduate student researcher at the Eviction Lab. He studies integration, housing and inequality, with a particular focus on the role of housing policies in fostering integrated and equitable communities. Matt created the National Zoning and Land Use Database, a database of zoning and land use policies covering the period between 2019-2022 for over 2,600 municipalities across the country.

Connect: LinkedIn

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During this session, panelists will share their experiences and thoughts on working with text extracted from documents, the social web or other sources. How can journalists turn unstructured information in various languages into data to better understand patterns and trends? Attendees will learn about approaches to analyzing text as well as tools — ranging from simple formulas in Google Sheets to nifty tools in DocumentCloud to more complex ones like Python-based libraries. Attendees will walk away with methods to approaching text analysis projects, both simple and complex.

Speakers

Fernanda Aguirre, The Examination

Fernanda Aguirre is a data analyst working at The Examination. She has worked as a data journalist at Data Crítica and served as a trainer at the Consortium to Support Independent Journalism in Latin America (CAPIR), where she has mentored journalists from several countries in data analysis and investigative tools.

Connect: LinkedIn, GitHub

Chris Amico, MuckRock

Chris Amico is a senior developer at MuckRock, working on DocumentCloud. He has worked at local and national news organizations as a programmer, editor and reporter.

Connect: GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon

Josephine Lukito, University of Texas at Austin

Josephine ("Jo") Lukito (she/her) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media. She is also a Senior Faculty Research Affiliate for the Center for Media Engagement. Jo uses computational and machine learning approaches to study political language, with a focus on harmful digital content and multi-platform flows. She also studies data access for researchers and journalists.

Connect: X, Github

Lam Thuy Vo, The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University New York and The Markup

Lam Thuy Vo is an investigative reporter with The Markup and an associate professor of data journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University New York.

Connect: X, GitHub, LinkedIn

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Several candidates running for the presidency in the 2024 election have raised hundreds of millions of dollars through aligned political operations, including super PACs, leadership PACs, congressional reelection campaigns and even dark money groups that do not disclose their donors – and sometimes even their spending – to the Federal Election Commission. This session will cover how to follow the money around these groups aligned with potential presidential contenders and their allies, from each group’s spending to the donors bankrolling them.

Speakers

Michael Beckel, Issue One

Michael Beckel is the research director at Issue One, a DC-based bipartisan political reform advocacy organization. He has authored reports that uncovered donors behind mysterious dark money groups, exposed questionable spending by lawmakers’ leadership PACs, examined the turnover among election officials, and more. He previously worked as a reporter for more than a decade, including at OpenSecrets, the Center for Public Integrity, and Mother Jones.

Connect: X, Post

Carrie Levine, Votebeat

Carrie Levine is Votebeat's managing editor. She was previously a senior reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, where she covered voting access, money in politics and influence. She has also worked for the National Law Journal and the Charlotte Observer. She was research director at CREW, a nonpartisan watchdog group. A graduate of Boston University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she is based in Washington, D.C.

Connect: X

Anna Massoglia, OpenSecrets

Anna Massoglia is the editorial and investigations manager at OpenSecrets. Her research areas also include foreign influence and investigations into opaque spending networks. Anna holds degrees in political science and psychology from North Carolina State University and a J.D. from the University of the District of Columbia School of Law. Previously, Anna worked as a research analyst and editor at Bloomberg BNA.

Connect: X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Mastadon, Threads, Bluesky

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With the recent Supreme Court affirmative action ruling and the anti-DEI movement, colleges today are overhauling the ways they recruit, admit, and retain historically marginalized students. Learn about ways you can understand college outcomes and write about today’s debates.

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

Speakers

Daarel Burnette II, The Chronicle of Higher Education

Daarel Burnette II is a senior editor at The Chronicle of Higher Education. Before joining The Chronicle in 2022, he served as an assistant managing editor and reporter for Education Week and as the bureau chief of Chalkbeat Tennessee. He has worked as an education reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Louisville Courier Journal. He also worked as a general-assignment reporter at the Chicago Tribune.

Connect: LinkedIn

Chris Quintana, USA TODAY

Chris Quintana is on USA TODAY’s investigations team, focused on college oversight and ed tech companies. His work revealed a university that managed to receive accreditation seemingly without students or staff. He previously worked at the Chronicle of Higher Education where he and another reporter revealed that a student loan expert cited by the media was actually the creation of a student loan refinancing company.

Connect: X, LinkedIn

Olivia Sanchez, The Hechinger Report

Olivia Sanchez writes about higher education for The Hechinger Report. Olivia previously covered local and state government at The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland. Olivia earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Portland and a master’s degree in journalism at the University of Oregon. Olivia serves on IRE’s member services committee and chairs the LGBTQ+ subcommittee.

Connect: LinkedIn

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Most journalists who’ve covered the criminal justice system know how difficult it can be to pry coherent data out of the police, the courts and the prisons. And even if you can get data, is it even usable? In this panel discussion, journalists from City Bureau, the Invisible Institute and The Marshall Project will talk about their recent, data-driven investigations into the justice system. They’ll talk about how to get (or make) data, how to vet the data and how to identify the strongest stories within the data. They’ll share their hard-won wisdom from their analyses and reporting and will want to hear advice from others in the audience as well.

Speakers

Sarah Conway, City Bureau

Tom Meagher, The Marshall Project

Senior editor Tom Meagher joined The Marshall Project at its founding in 2014. He previously led an interactive team for the Digital First Media newspaper chain and was the data editor at the Newark Star-Ledger. He got his start in journalism covering night cops for a small daily paper in Kansas.

Trina Reynolds-Tyler, Invisible Institute

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This session is great for beginners or NICAR newbies!

Data- and document-driven journalism is universally challenging for many reasons. It requires specific skills to obtain, clean and analyze information, report the findings and present the story in an engaging and understandable way. A data-driven reporter may need strong support from other reporters, editors, access to tools and other resources to produce this kind of story. For smaller, local newsrooms the challenges are amplified. Funding is only one important step.

For the last two years, the Data-Driven Reporting Project (DDRP) has awarded financial support to local news organizations to amplify data-and-document driven reporting. Along the way, we’ve learned about some of the gaps that can prevent a newsroom from completing a successful project.

Join us to hear stories of what has worked (or has not) to build data journalism capacity in small and underserved newsrooms.

Speakers

Pam Dempsey, Data-Driven Reporting Project

Pam Dempsey is the program director of the Data-Driven Reporting Project at Medill/Northwestern and former executive director of Investigate Midwest.

Connect: LinkedInhttps://linkedin.com/in/pamelagdempsey

Chris Gelardi, New York Focus

Chris Gelardi is a reporter for New York Focus, where he investigates prisons, police, prosecutors and other facets of the state’s criminal-legal system. His other investigative and narrative work — spanning topics from immigration enforcement, militarism, and contemporary colonialism — has appeared in more than a dozen outlets, most frequently The Nation, The Intercept and The Appeal. He’s based in Queens.

Connect: X

Brittany Harlow, VNN Oklahoma

With over a decade of experience in traditional and non-traditional news, Brittany started as a producer and reporter for KRMG in Tulsa before transitioning to television news at KXII. She left her position as weekend anchor to launch VNN with her husband and business partner Kelly Tidwell (Creek and Cherokee) in 2018. Brittany currently serves as the company’s director and lead journalist for VNN Oklahoma.

Connect: VNN, X, Facebook, LinkedIn

Sylvia A. Harvey, Independent journalist

Sylvia A. Harvey, also known as SAH, is an award-winning independent journalist, speaker and author of "The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family." SAH’s reporting on race, class, policy and incarceration is featured in The Nation, Elle, Politico, Vox, The Marshall Project, The Root, NPR and other outlets. Her work is being used in university coursework and has been cited by federal lawmakers calling for criminal justice reform. SAH lives in New York.

Connect: X, LinkedIn, Website

Daniel Wheaton, NPR's Midwest Newsroom (Nebraska Public Media)

Daniel Wheaton is the data reporter for NPR's Midwest Newsroom, an investigative public radio collaboration with member stations in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. He's based at Nebraska Public Media in Lincoln, Nebraska. He also is an adjunct instructor at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln and coaches the speech and debate team.

Connect: X, LinkedIn

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The "disparity" has emerged as one of the most powerful and widely used tools for identifying and critiquing social inequality. Disparity-based analyses have helped us answer questions like who advances in school, who owns a home, who gets sick, or who gets pulled over. As quantitative methods have become more common in journalism, the disparity has become a mainstay of investigative, accountability-based reporting.

But has our profession become overreliant on this metric? Although we've come to expect disparities to measure social inequality, we rarely say out loud the assumptions — and uncertainty — underlying them. Sometimes, we let the data do our work for us, opening ourselves up to criticism by people with starkly different assumptions about what the data means. In this presentation and group discussion, we’ll take up this question with real examples from ProPublica's past work on issues as distinctly different as COVID-19, traffic enforcement, and home-lending.

We'll proceed from the main assumption underlying any disparity analysis. We'll walk through the basic math. We'll talk about what disparities are really good at expressing — and what they leave out. And we'll end with a discussion of how we can, and must, shore up our disparity analyses with robust reporting on the mechanisms that produce inequality, rather than the symptoms.

Speakers

Sophie Chou, ProPublica

Haru Coryne, ProPublica

Haru Coryne is a data reporter for ProPublica, based in Chicago. She uses a combination of statistical methods, computer software and document-based research to find stories in large troves of information. She is especially interested in housing, business and economic development.

Connect: Mastodon

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Are Generative AI systems actually useful? How do we use them effectively and ethically?

Panelists detail their tips and tricks for using LLMs like ChatGPT on the job. We’ve used it to battle ornery records custodians, whip up scripts, create sample data sets and help debug code. We’ll talk about how to maximize the utility of this digital assistant, as well as limitations and pitfalls, including using problems suggested by the audience. Submit your data reporting problem before the panel and we'll show you how we would solve them: https://bit.ly/nicar_ai

Speakers

Pri Bengani, Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University

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

Connect: Mastodon

Andrew Ford, The Arizona Republic

Andrew Ford is an investigative reporter for the Arizona Republic, where his healthcare accountability reporting was quoted in a complaint by the Department of Justice against a company Ford reported on, which later declared bankruptcy. Ford's work spurred a bigger budget for the state medical board and a bill to improve patient access to records of doctor misconduct.

Connect: X

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 Pulitzer Prize for public service. His work has also won the Loeb Award for international reporting (2022), the SOPA Award for journalistic innovation (2022), the IRE Award for breaking news (2021) and the SABEW Award for technology reporting (2019).

Connect: X, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon

Jonathan Soma, Columbia Journalism School

Jonathan Soma is Knight Chair in Data Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, where he directs both the Data Journalism MS and the summer intensive Lede Program. He regularly publishes tutorials on everything from basic Python and analysis to ai2html and machine learning. At the moment he unfortunately cannot stop talking about AI. When Soma isn't boring his students to tears he's probably rescuing cats.

Connect: X, GitHub

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Public records can serve as a vital source of information about the U.S. elections process and how Americans cast their votes. This session will cover how federal and state open records laws address access to voter rolls, ballots, initial ballot count and recount processes, and other election-related records and data that can help inform your reporting on the 2024 election.

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

Speakers

Christina A. Cassidy, The Associated Press

Christina Cassidy is a reporter with AP's national politics, democracy and elections team and is focused on how elections are run in the U.S., the laws that govern the voting process and efforts to secure elections from various threats. Cassidy has covered voting and elections for the AP since 2016. A graduate of the University of Southern California, she lives in Atlanta with her family.

Connect: X, LinkedIn

Kate Huangpu, Spotlight PA

Huangpu 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. Huangpu also tracks major legislation and the impact that it has on communities across the state.

Connect: X, LinkedIn

Carrie Levine, Votebeat

Carrie Levine is Votebeat's managing editor. She was previously a senior reporter for the Center for Public Integrity, where she covered voting access, money in politics and influence. She has also worked for the National Law Journal and the Charlotte Observer. She was research director at CREW, a nonpartisan watchdog group. A graduate of Boston University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she is based in Washington, D.C.

Connect: X

Gunita Singh, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Gunita Singh is a staff attorney at the Reporters Committee where she litigates federal FOIA and state public records cases on behalf of reporters and news outlets, and regularly provides newsroom trainings in FOIA best practices. She has co-authored two publications on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected access to public records. She received her J.D. from Georgetown University.

Connect: LinkedIn

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Data journalism is so much more than spreadsheets, R, Python, Datawrapper, etc. For university-level educators, our courses tend to be branded as 'skills-based,' but there are so many other non-tech or tool aspects of producing a piece of journalism that involves data. In this session, attendees will hear from data educators who will focus on how they bring history, theory, ethics, research, and practical exercises into their classrooms to impart upon students that data journalism is not just counting, sorting and grouping.

Speakers

Eva Constantaras, Lighthouse Reports

Eva Constantaras is a data journalist specialized in building collaborative investigative teams. These teams have reported from across Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa on accountability issues ranging from algorithmic bias and food insecurity to extractive industries and sanctions evasion. As a Google Data Journalism Scholar and a Fulbright Fellow, she developed a course for investigative data journalism in high-risk environments.

Connect: LinkedIn

Nausheen Husain, Syracuse University

Nausheen Husain writes about civil rights issues, incarceration and security, and inequities. Husain focuses on Muslim communities and the past and present 'War on Terror.' Husain is currently a freelance journalist and an assistant professor at Syracuse University, teaching journalism with an emphasis on data analysis, underreported communities and civil rights. Husain's academic research focuses on the news processes and coverage choices during the ongoing American-led 'War on Terror.'

Connect: X, Bluesky

Janelle O'Dea, Center for Public Integrity

Janelle O'Dea spent a decade in print before becoming the Center for Public Integrity's data reporter for local initiatives at the end of 2022.

Connect: X

Winny de Jong, NRC

Data journalist Winny de Jong works at the Dutch newspaper NRC, where she leads the editorial data team. She knows all the things that truly matter won’t fit in a dataset, and thinks life is not a pizza.

Connect: LinkedIn

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This hands-on training will provide practical tips for getting records out of universities. The session will offer examples of useful records for covering high education, and then cover strategies for finding and acquiring them. We'll also provide strategies for getting records relevant to private universities.

Speakers

David Cuillier, Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project

David Cuillier is director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida. He is a former data journalist and has taught more than 10,000 people how to acquire public records. He is co-author of "The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records," and has testified three times before Congress regarding FOIA. He writes the FOI Files column for the IRE Journal.

Connect: X, LinkedIn

Diana Fuentes, IRE & NICAR

Diana R. Fuentes is a second-generation Texan who grew up on the Texas-Mexico border. She is an award-winning journalist with more than 35 years' experience, from copy editor and cops reporter to executive editor and publisher. She serves on Headliners Foundation of Texas Board of Governors, was past president of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and served on national board of National Association of Hispanic Journalists, among other activities.

Connect: X

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Three investigative reporters who have exposed senior living injuries – and made impact – will share tips on how to cover a secretive industry with little regulation.

Speakers

Jayme Fraser, USA TODAY / Gannett

Jayme Fraser is an investigative data journalist for USA TODAY who lives in the Rocky Mountain West. Her work has spurred congressional hearings, changes to state laws, new federal rules, updates to hospital policies, and helped free a man wrongfully convicted of infant murder. She also has taught courses and workshops on a variety of journalistic techniques, from narrative reporting to data analysis, and serves on the advisory board of Equal Access Public Media.

Connect: LinkedIn

Sahana Jayaraman, The Arizona Republic

Sahana Jayaraman is an award-winning investigative data reporter whose recent coverage of resident-on-resident violence in assisted living facilities in Arizona has led to reform proposals currently moving through the state legislature. She works mostly with R and Python, and occasionally dabbles in JavaScript.

Connect: X

Caitlin McGlade, Arizona Republic

Caitlin is an investigative data journalist with about 12 years of experience. Her recent series on seniors with dementia hurting and killing each other in assisted living facilities has resulted in major reform proposals likely to be signed into law this legislative session. She also teaches data journalism to graduate students at the Arizona State University Walter Cronkite School of Journalism.

Connect: X

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The speakers are a prolific FOIA reporter and prolific FOIA litigator and will share insights from the past year of FOIA litigation on various subjects of public interest.

Speakers

Jason Leopold, Bloomberg News

Jason Leopold is senior investigative reporter at Bloomberg News. He is a two-time Pulitzer prize finalist, a recipient of IRE's FOI award and was inducted into the National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame. Leopold's FOIA work was profiled on the front page of The New York Times and he has testified before Congress about FOIA's shortcomings. TRAC has identified Leopold as the "most active individual FOIA litigator in the United States."

Connect: X, LinkedIn, Mastadon

Matt Topic, Loevy & Loevy

Matt Topic leads the media and transparency practice at Loevy & Loevy. He has litigated hundreds of state and federal open records cases.

Connect: X

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From natural disasters and military operations to visual forensics, the use of remotely sensed satellite data in reporting breaking news has a fundamental role in the newsroom. Speakers will talk about their approaches to and representation of satellite imagery and data in their work covering the war in Gaza, crackdown on protests in Iran, flooding, wildfires and earthquakes.

Speakers

Leanne Abraham, The New York Times

Leanne Abraham is a graphics editor at the New York Times specializing in cartography. Before joining the Times, she worked at Planet, learning the ins and outs of optical remote sensing. In her work she uses satellite imagery and GIS to respond to breaking news events such as the Israel-Hamas war, as well as to contribute to enterprise coverage. She holds a Master’s degree in Cartography and GIS from the University of Wisconsin - Madison.

Connect: X

Allison Martell, Reuters

Allison Martell is a senior correspondent with Reuters in Toronto, Canada, and part of the investigative data journalism team. Before joining the team she covered aviation, the automotive industry, railways, retail, mining, metals, and COVID test and vaccine manufacturing.

Connect: LinkedIn

Atthar Mirza, Bloomberg Industry Group

Atthar Mirza is an award-winning interactive graphics developer and web application architect at Bloomberg Industry Group. He specializes in interactive storytelling, data visualization, three-dimensional modeling and animation. He has previously worked as an investigative reporter with the Visual Forensics team at The Washington Post, as a video journalist at The Wall Street Journal and as an animator at The Atlantic.

Connect: X, LinkedIn

Deborah Nelson, University of Maryland

Deborah Nelson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist based at the University of Maryland, home of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. Most recently, she co-authored “Bat Lands,” a Reuters series that analyzed satellite imagery to examine the link between ecological conditions and disease outbreaks worldwide. She is a former IRE president.

Connect: LinkedIn

Daniel Wolfe, Washington Post

Daniel Wolfe is a graphics reporter for the Washington Post. His past includes data and graphics reporting at CNN and Quartz, as well as work at the aerospace company Planet Labs. Curiosity drives his work developing meaningful and memorable visual pieces.

Connect: Bluesky, LinkedIn

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In the last year, many publications have made mis-steps in how they explain, contextualize, and visualize data about trans communities. Data-driven journalism about trans communities often relies on sources that are incomplete or frequently changing, buried in complex scientific studies, or influenced by poll and survey design. Understanding all of that can require a lot of specialized knowledge, both about data and about trans people.

In this session, we will talk about common errors when working with data about trans people, the consequences of misuse, and how to avoid these errors in your reporting.

This builds on, but has entirely separate content from, Finding and using data about LGBTQ+ people.

This session has been planned in collaboration with the Trans Journalists Association. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Alberto Cairo, University of Miami

Cairo is the Knight Chair in Infographics and Data Visualization at the University of Miami. He has led graphics teams in Spain, Brazil and the U.S., and he is the author of "The Functional Art" (2013), "The Truthful Art" (2016), "How Charts Lie" (2019) and "The Art of Insight" (2023). Cairo is also a consultan for organizations such as Google, Microsoft, McMaster-Carr, the European Union, Eurostat, the World Bank, the U.S. Army National Guard and many others.

Connect: LinkedIn, Bluesky

Kae Petrin, Chalkbeat

Kae is a data and graphics reporter on Chalkbeat’s data visuals team, where they collaborate with local reporters to tell data-driven stories about education. They co-founded the Trans Journalists Association and now serve as President and Executive Director. They have contributed data journalism to reporting recognized by the Education Writers Association, LION Publishers and others. Previously, they produced graphics, tools and investigative reporting in St. Louis.

Connect: LinkedIn, Github, Portfolio, Team blog

Aarushi Sahejpal, American University, Investigative Reporting Workshop and The Center for Public Integrity

Aarushi Sahejpal is a professor of quantitative methods and data journalism at American University, data editor at The Investigative Reporting Workshop and a data reporter on The Accountability Project at The Center for Public Integrity.

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As challenging as Congressional and other federal elections are to properly cover, local races often have gotten less of a spotlight. Join us to talk through how you can better cover local elections, no matter your experience or bandwidth. We'll walk through a range of techniques to background political candidates running for office, including requesting public records, analyzing personal financial disclosures and more.

Speakers

Elizabeth Clemons, Sunlight Search

Elizabeth Clemons is a Research Manager at Sunlight Search, based in Boulder, CO. She has worked in investigative research for various organizations since completing a master’s degree in International Security at the Korbel School.

Connect: LinkedIn

Kelly Kauffman, MuckRock

Kelly Kauffman is MuckRock’s engagement journalist, focusing on newsletters, community callouts and reporting that is supported by public involvement. Previously, she worked at the campaign finance organization OpenSecrets as their outreach and digital media manager, where she helped shed light on the role of money in U.S. politics.

Connect: X, Instagram

Noah Pransky, NBC News

Noah is a national correspondent at NBC who uses data to find unexplored stories in the political, consumer, and sports business worlds. Previously, he worked as an investigative reporter at Tampa Bay's WTSP-TV, where he earned national Polk, Murrow, duPont, and Cronkite awards.

Connect: LinkedIn, X

Albert Serna, OpenSecrets

Albert Serna Jr. is a Roy W. Howard investigative reporting fellow at OpenSecrets and a recent graduate of the Master of Arts in Investigative Reporting program at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Serna's passion is investigating at the intersection of race and identity, with a focus on underserved communities and populations.

Connect: X

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Freelancing' is a vague way to describe working independently, whether you're a lifer or just between jobs. Let's talk about funding your investigative passion project, supplementing your income and balancing prestige pub gigs with journalism-adjacent work. We'll help you figure out pitching, access, platforms and even tax considerations so you can do the work you want to do. Our industry is a hot mess, but this panel of freelancing experts will help you find opportunity in chaos.

Speakers

Sylvia A. Harvey, Independent journalist

Sylvia A. Harvey, also known as SAH, is an award-winning independent journalist, speaker and author of "The Shadow System: Mass Incarceration and the American Family." SAH’s reporting on race, class, policy and incarceration is featured in The Nation, Elle, Politico, Vox, The Marshall Project, The Root, NPR and other outlets. Her work is being used in university coursework and has been cited by federal lawmakers calling for criminal justice reform. SAH lives in New York.

Connect: X, LinkedIn, Website

Kristin Hussey, Independent Journalist

Kristin Hussey is a Connecticut-based freelance reporter. Since 2007, Kristin has reported on corruption, philanthropy, guns, politics, poverty, pizza and prom dresses for The New York Times. B.C., Kristin was a staff writer for WSJ.com, The Capital in Annapolis, Md., and The News in Boca Raton, Fla.

Connect: X, GitHub, LinkedIn, Threads

Katherine Lewis, The Institute for Independent Journalists

Katherine Reynolds Lewis is founder of the Institute for Independent Journalists and columnist for Nieman Reports. She’s an award-winning science journalist, educator and author (Good News About Bad Behavior) covering children, behavioral and mental health, education, race, gender, disability, and equity for the Atlantic, Mother Jones, NY Times, Undark, and Washington Post. A Harvard physics graduate, Katherine was national correspondent for Newhouse and Bloomberg News.

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Benét Wilson, Poynter-Koch Media & Journalism Fellowship

Benét J. Wilson is director of the Poynter-Koch Media and Journalism Fellowship, a year-long program designed to train early-career journalists. She was previously a senior editor and travel/aviation writer for The Points Guy. She serves on the boards of the Institute for Independent Journalism and Mercer University’s Center for Collaborative Journalism and has also served on the boards of the Online News Association and the National Association of Black Journalists. She is a strong advocate for media diversity, mentoring and career navigation. She has moderated workshops and webinars on topics including resumes/cover letters, digital journalism, branding and social media. She graduated from American University in Washington, D.C., with a B.A. in broadcast journalism. She resides in Baltimore, MD.

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With droughts in the west, water contamination in the Midwest, water usage rights nabbing headlines and drinking water quality issues in our metros and rural areas, reporting on water is a high-interest area ripe for further exploration. Panelists will talk about how they identify data sources and government documents that inform their reporting on groundwater quantity and contaminants in water, including PFAs and nitrate.

Speakers

David Condos, KUER, NPR Utah

David Condos is a reporter with KUER, NPR Utah. Based in St. George, his beat focuses on environmental issues, water and public lands. Prior to joining KUER, he spent two and a half years covering rural Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. His reporting has earned several prestigious honors, including three National Edward R. Murrow awards, six Public Media Journalists Association awards and seven Regional Edward R. Murrow awards.

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Mira Rojanasakul, The New York Times

Mira is a New York Times reporter who uses data and graphics to cover climate and the environment.

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Lisa Sorg, NC Newsline

Lisa Sorg is an environmental investigative reporter with NC Newsline, a nonprofit media outlet in Raleigh. A journalist for 29 years, Sorg has a keen interest in the environment, the social justice impacts of pollution and corporate malfeasance. She has won dozens of awards for her work, including the Stokes Award from the National Press Foundation for her story about the environmental damage from a former missile plant on a Black and Latinx neighborhood in Burlington.

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Yanqi Xu, Flatwater Free Press

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The barriers facing migrant communities in accessing fair working conditions are rarely covered through data since reliable data is so hard to come by. This has changed recently through groundbreaking reporting that center the information needs of affected communities, including Rappler's coverage of trafficking of domestic workers, The New Arab's coverage of the fate of Syrian doctors and Lighthouse Report's coverage of the victims of brain waste in Europe. Each story collects data on otherwise invisible communities to map the extent of exploitation, identify barriers to implementing policy solutions and identifying ways communities themselves can take action to protect their own rights.

Speakers

Justin-Casimir Braun, Lighthouse Reports

Justin is a data journalist focused on the societal impact of automated systems and artificial intelligence. In the past, Justin has worked with AlgorithmWatch e.V., a German digital rights organization, and various grassroots NGOs, documenting human rights violations against migrants on the Balkan Route. He holds a bachelor degree in International Relations from Stanford University.

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Eva Constantaras, Lighthouse Reports

Eva Constantaras is a data journalist specialized in building collaborative investigative teams. These teams have reported from across Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa on accountability issues ranging from algorithmic bias and food insecurity to extractive industries and sanctions evasion. As a Google Data Journalism Scholar and a Fulbright Fellow, she developed a course for investigative data journalism in high-risk environments.

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Loujein Haj Youssef, Radio Rozana

Loujein Haj Youssef is a Syrian investigative journalist with expertise in Middle Eastern affairs. She is the recipient of the 2018 Migration Media Award.

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Ana Santos, Rappler

Ana P. Santos is an award-winning investigative journalist who reports on the intersections of gender, sexuality and labor migration. Her work has been published in Rappler, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, Al Jazeera and DW Germany. She has a post graduate degree in Gender (Sexuality) from the London School of Economics and Political Science as a Chevening Scholar.

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In the past decade, many news organizations have grappled with defining the term "mass shooting" and assessing the data we use to count these events. Different data sources (including from the government, advocacy organizations, and news outlets) use slightly different definitions of the term, and these discrepancies can be confusing for readers and make analysis of the phenomenon more complicated. This panel conversation among editors from publications that frequently cover mass shootings will consider how we think about the term, the available data on mass shootings, and data on gun violence more broadly.

Speakers

Lindsey Cook, The New York Times

Lindsey is a deputy editor for data journalism at The New York Times, working with the data journalism, election analytics and weather data teams. Previously, she worked at U.S. News & World Report as the data editor for news.

Larry Fenn, Associated Press

Larry Fenn is a data journalist at the Associated Press. His background is in mathematics and statistics.

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John Harden, The Washington Post

John D. Harden is a data reporter for The Washington Post covering everything from education to mass killings. He's been a part of the Post and its data team since 2019. He is also a journalism lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley.

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Simone Landon, The New York Times

Simone Landon is a deputy editor on the Graphics desk at The New York Times, where she works on U.S. news coverage.

Jennifer Mascia, The Trace

Jennifer Mascia is a senior news writer and founding staffer at The Trace, the only newsroom in America exclusively covering gun violence, which launched in 2015. She previously reported on gun violence for The New York Times. She is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and CUNY Hunter College. In 2010, she authored a memoir, "Never Tell Our Business to Strangers," which detailed her investigation into her late father's criminal past.

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Every data desk operates differently, and starting and maintaining a data desk at a student-run publication often requires a lot of trial and error. How can you publish more data-centered reporting as a student? What does the process of starting a data desk from scratch look like? Data editors and reporters from student-run publications will walk through how they began their data desks, what the organization and editing processes look like, how their data desks have grown and shifted and advice for anyone hopeful to bring more data reporting to their student newsrooms.

Speakers

Katherine Oung, The Vanderbilt Hustler

Katherine Oung is a junior at Vanderbilt University studying computer science and political science. They serve as data director at their student newspaper, The Vanderbilt Hustler. Last summer, they worked as a data intern through the Dow Jones News Fund program on the IndyStar’s investigations section. They are also a freelance journalist who has written for The New York Times, Vox, Teen Vogue and more.

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Rhea Patney, The Vanderbilt Hustler

Brina Ratangee, The Vanderbilt Hustler

Brina Ratangee is a senior at Vanderbilt University majoring in medicine, health and society and neuroscience. She currently serves as News Editor of The Vanderbilt Hustler and has written op-eds for The Tennessean on various equity and health issues. She hopes to work at the intersection of medicine, journalism and public health in the future.

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Victoria Stavish, The Diamondback

Victoria Stavish is a senior journalism and information science double major at The University of Maryland. She is a co-data editor of her university's independent student newspaper, The Diamondback, and has interned at The Texas Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and The Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. After graduation, she will work at The Minneapolis Star Tribune as a data reporting intern.

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Lam Thuy Vo, The Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University New York and The Markup

Lam Thuy Vo is an investigative reporter with The Markup and an associate professor of data journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at City University New York.

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Rina Torchinsky, Forbes

Shreya Vuttaluru, Tampa Bay Times

Shreya Vuttaluru is the investigative data reporter at the Tampa Bay Times. Her work has appeared in the Associated Press, The Baltimore Banner and the Dallas Morning News. She really likes maps.

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Come explore the possibilities of building a support system for journalism – a connected infrastructure of tools, platforms and collaborations – that can provide services tailored to the size and abilities of each journalist and newsroom. We'll discuss what it could look like, how it would work and what it will take to get there, starting with the Big Local News DART matrix of resources and needs: Data, Algorithms and tools, Reporting recipes and Training.

Speakers

Diana Fuentes, IRE & NICAR

Diana R. Fuentes is a second-generation Texan who grew up on the Texas-Mexico border. She is an award-winning journalist with more than 35 years' experience, from copy editor and cops reporter to executive editor and publisher. She serves on Headliners Foundation of Texas Board of Governors, was past president of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and served on national board of National Association of Hispanic Journalists, among other activities.

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Marc Lavallee, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Cheryl Phillips, Stanford University

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Data on LGBTQ+ people is notoriously sparse and inconsistent, especially at the federal level. So how do we find and use alternatives like state or municipal data, advocacy group surveys or reports, and polls? And how do we deal with the unique problems each of these data sources bring?

We’ll talk about what data’s out there, how to use it in reporting and visual work, how to think through common reporting problems, and how to tell a good story even with tricky data.

This builds on, but has entirely separate content from, How charts lie: transgender data edition.

This session has been planned in collaboration with the Trans Journalists Association. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Minami Funakoshi, Reuters

Minami Funakoshi (they/them) is an award-winning graphics journalist and full-stack developer at Reuters. Their work has won Information is Beautiful, Society for News Design, Malofiej and other awards. They are also a board member of the Trans Journalists Association.

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Jasmine Mithani, The 19th*

Adam Rhodes, IRE & NICAR

Adam M. Rhodes is a first-generation Cuban American journalist whose work primarily focuses on queer people and the criminal justice 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. They have been published in outlets including The Nation, BuzzFeed News and The Washington Post.

Emilia Ruzicka, University of Virginia, Freelance Data Journalist

Emilia Ruzicka is a data journalist, designer and producer pursuing an MA in media, culture and technology and certificate in digital humanities at University of Virginia. Alongside their studies, Emilia conducts research concerning AI and journalism, data governance and digital risk. Emilia’s work can be found in magazines, newspapers, online publications and podcasts. Their research interests include data ethics, accessibility, queerness and community-building.

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It's easier and cheaper than ever to do large-scale scraping projects with a small team. We will discuss code, cloud computing infrastructure, and lessons learned. We will also run through sample notebooks that attendees can take home and adapt to their own 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 Pulitzer Prize for public service. His work has also won the Loeb Award for international reporting (2022), the SOPA Award for journalistic innovation (2022), the IRE Award for breaking news (2021) and the SABEW Award for technology reporting (2019).

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Ilica Mahajan, The Marshall Project

Leon Yin, Bloomberg

Leon Yin is an award-winning journalist at Bloomberg focused on data-driven investigations into AI. He writes Inspect Element: a practitioners guide to auditing algorithms. Previously, he was a reporter at The Markup.

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You’ve done all the work, now you need to visualize it. See examples of how data journalists use graphics, animations, photographs and video to explain and display their work on a variety of platforms. Panelists will share how we gather, parse and produce visual evidence and how to incorporate it into investigations in a clear and concise way. This session is for everyone.

Speakers

Carlotta Dotto, CNN

Tisha Thompson, ESPN

Tisha is an investigative reporter at ESPN working on all platforms, including SportsCenter, Outside the Lines and espn.com. She credits IRE/NICAR for acclerating her career from small-market television to one of the largest platforms in the business. She's been a member for more than two decades and is always looking for a way to give back to other journalists in return for all of the excellent advice she's received at this conference through the years.

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Tracee Wilkins, WRC

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A data deep dive into the 2023 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

Justin-Casimir Braun, Lighthouse Reports

Justin is a data journalist focused on the societal impact of automated systems and artificial intelligence. In the past, Justin has worked with AlgorithmWatch e.V., a German digital rights organization, and various grassroots NGOs, documenting human rights violations against migrants on the Balkan Route. He holds a bachelor degree in International Relations from Stanford University.

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Sarah Cohen, Arizona State University

Jason Grotto, Bloomberg News

Jason Grotto is an investigations editor at Bloomberg News, specializing in quantitative analysis. His project exposing widespread inaccuracies and disparities in Chicago’s property tax assessment system was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for local reporting and received the Gerald Loeb Award for local reporting in 2018.

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Aaron Sankin, The Markup

Aaron Sankin reports on the intersection of technology and inequality. While at The Markup, he has focused on issues ranging from the digital divide and social media platform governance to law enforcement technology and car insurance regulation.

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Leon Yin, Bloomberg

Leon Yin is an award-winning journalist at Bloomberg focused on data-driven investigations into AI. He writes Inspect Element: a practitioners guide to auditing algorithms. Previously, he was a reporter at The Markup.

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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 an investigative reporter and editor at NBC News, where her work appears in articles on NBCNews.com and as video stories on Nightly News, the TODAY Show and NBC News NOW. She is an adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism School, where she teaches investigative reporting for the Stabile Center for Investigative Reporting and Data Journalism Program.

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Veronica Penney, The Washington Post

Veronica Penney is a graphics reporter on The Washington Post's climate team. She previously worked as an investigative data reporter for Colorado Public Radio, a climate data reporter at The New York Times and on the investigative unit at the Miami Herald.

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Emily Zentner, The California Newsroom

Emily Zentner is the data journalist for the statewide public and nonprofit media collaborative The California Newsroom, where she works with partner newsrooms on investigative stories and training reporters to use data skills in their reporting. Her work primarily focuses on criminal justice and climate stories. She was previously data reporter at CapRadio in Sacramento, where she reported on wildfire, climate change and police mishandling of sexual assault cases.

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Witness the remarkable surge in the number of eligible Asian American voters during the previous presidential election cycle. With projections estimating over 15 million Asian Americans eligible to vote, constituting just over 6% of the eligible population, their growth surpasses that of other racial and ethnic groups.

What insights can we gain from analyzing existing data on Asian American voters? How will Asian Americans make a significant impact in local elections? What challenges do reporters commonly face when covering AAPI issues? Join this panel, hosted by the Asian American Journalists Association, and glean knowledge from researchers and seasoned data reporters.

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

Speakers

Nicole Dungca, The Washington Post

Pratheek Rebala, Center for Public Integrity

Neil G. Ruiz, Pew Research Center

Neil G. Ruiz is Pew Research Center’s Head of New Research Initiatives. Neil is also the principal investigator of the Center’s comprehensive study of Asian Americans, which received the 2023 Inclusive Voices Award from the American Association for Public Opinion Research. He has a background in demographic, qualitative, and survey research methods. He is a political economist with a Ph.D. from the MIT, a master’s from Oxford and a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley.

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Janelle Wong, AAPI Data

Janelle Wong is a Senior Researcher with AAPIData. She received her PhD from Yale University in Political Science. She is the author of multiple books and articles on Asian American political participation.

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Hear from panelists on how they keep themselves, sources, data and documents safe. Top leaders in the industry discuss what their newsrooms do when faced with political threats, unlawful arrests and detainments, surveillance and more.

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

Speakers

Paul Beckett, The Wall Street Journal

Paul Beckett is assistant editor of The Wall Street Journal working to secure the release of Evan Gershkovich, the WSJ reporter wrongfully imprisoned in Russia since March 29, 2023. Paul has worked for Dow Jones and the Journal for 34 years, most recently as Washington bureau chief.

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David Cuillier, Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project

David Cuillier is director of the Joseph L. Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida. He is a former data journalist and has taught more than 10,000 people how to acquire public records. He is co-author of "The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records," and has testified three times before Congress regarding FOIA. He writes the FOI Files column for the IRE Journal.

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Emilia Díaz-Struck, Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN)

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 serves on the board of directors of IRE and has been a member since 1994. A longtime consumer investigative reporter, Cindy is a San Francisco Bay Area native and UC Berkeley alum.

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Karrie Kehoe, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ)

Ron Nixon, Associated Press

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You've arrived to the NICAR party and are making inroads as you put down roots in the industry. What should be front of mind and what should you not sweat as much? This dynamic group of journalists will share tips and insights into surviving the industry, what they wish they had known, what to look for, as well as provide advice for new and even mid-level journalists. Come join in the conversation with your peers about how they are building a career.

Speakers

Jasmine Han, Industry Dive

Jasmine Ye Han is a DC-based graphics developer at Industry Dive, where she tells business news stories with data analysis and visualizations. She's passionate about creativity and mental health. Previously she was a data journalism reporter at Bloomberg Industry Group. Jasmine is an alumnus of the Missouri School of Journalism and NICAR data library.

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Kate Howard, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting

Kate Howard (she/her) is editorial director at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting. Howard was a reporter for 16 years before becoming managing editor at the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting in 2018. She edits digital investigations and leads local initiatives at Reveal. Howard is a member of the board of directors for IRE and Louisville Public Media, and she lives in Louisville, Kentucky.

Caresse Jackman, InvestigateTV

Andrew Pantazi, The Tributary

Steven Rich, The Washington Post

Brian Rosenthal, The New York Times

Brian M. Rosenthal is a New York Times investigative reporter and the IRE President. Before joining The Times in 2017, he worked at The Seattle Times and then the Houston Chronicle. He won the 2020 Pulitzer in Investigative Reporting for exposing predatory lending in the taxi industry, and he was part of a team that won the 2015 Pulitzer in Breaking News for coverage of a deadly landslide. He has also won the Polk Award three times, among other honors.

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Mark Walker, The New York Times

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Anti-transgender laws have surged across state legislatures in recent years. At least 83 anti-trans bills have passed in U.S. states in 2023 so far, and hundreds more have been proposed in Congress. Many outlets have reported on the existence of this legislation, but fewer news organizations have dug deeper into the root causes of anti-trans activism or where money and resources for anti-trans legislation come from. More, as these laws go into effect across the U.S., there will be important stories about the consequences of their enforcement and the experiences of transgender people as their rights are chipped away.

Come with questions about how to find better reporting questions, frame stronger stories, and cut through politics to get to facts. Get practical tips on finding and reporting stories that cover anti-trans legislation's consequences accurately and responsibly. Panelists will talk through examples of how previous investigative stories were developed and how editorial framing decisions were made.

The first half of the session will be a brief panel discussion. The second half of the session will be a larger group discussion for all attendees. NICAR attendees are encouraged to bring story ideas to this session and workshop them with TJA members.

This session has been planned in collaboration with the Trans Journalists Association. IRE retains control of content, including the topic and speaker selection, for all conference sessions.

Speakers

Alberto Cairo, University of Miami

Cairo is the Knight Chair in Infographics and Data Visualization at the University of Miami. He has led graphics teams in Spain, Brazil and the U.S., and he is the author of "The Functional Art" (2013), "The Truthful Art" (2016), "How Charts Lie" (2019) and "The Art of Insight" (2023). Cairo is also a consultan for organizations such as Google, Microsoft, McMaster-Carr, the European Union, Eurostat, the World Bank, the U.S. Army National Guard and many others.

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Haru Coryne, ProPublica

Haru Coryne is a data reporter for ProPublica, based in Chicago. She uses a combination of statistical methods, computer software and document-based research to find stories in large troves of information. She is especially interested in housing, business and economic development.

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Justin Myers, Chicago Sun-Times

Justin Myers (he/him) is a data journalist, visual journalist, developer and parent based in Chicago. He joined the Chicago Sun-Times in fall 2023 as its interactives editor. Before that, he was the data editor for The Associated Press, where he'd worked since 2015. Justin graduated from the University of Missouri with degrees in journalism and engineering, and he enjoys making things out of flour, yarn and code — but rarely at the same time.

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Orion Rummler, The 19th News

Orion covers LGBTQ+ news, focused on state politics, breaking news and the underreported experiences of trans and queer people. He previously covered breaking news at Axios and contributed research to "Axios on HBO." He has reported from the White House, the State Department, the Education Department, outside the Supreme Court, from inside Capitol Hill, and in various D.C. coffeeshops. He is a transgender man.

Connect: LinkedIn

Lucas Waldron, ProPublica

Lucas Waldron (he/they) is a graphics editor at ProPublica, where he focuses on multimedia storytelling, cartography and data visualization.

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Newsrooms often keep data reporters separate from their government team, resulting in last-minute consultations and missed opportunities. In this session, a panel of government, policy, and data reporters will share databases, story ideas, tools, and other tips that they use in their beat. With 2024 on the horizon, this panel hopes to arm reporters with all the data they will need to cover their state.

Speakers

Justin Hicks, Louisville Public Media

Kate Huangpu, Spotlight PA

Huangpu 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. Huangpu also tracks major legislation and the impact that it has on communities across the state.

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Bianca Pallaro, The City

Pallaro is a senior data reporter, responsible for conceiving and carrying out focused, in-depth data investigations that uncover violations of public trust and drive real-world impact. Previously, she worked at USA Today and The New York Times, focusing on data acquisition, analysis and visualization for long data-driven investigations. Before moving to the United States to pursue her Masters at Columbia University, she worked as a senior data reporter at La Nación.

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Adam Rayes, Michigan Public (Formerly Michigan Radio)

Adam Yahya Rayes is a data reporter for Michigan Public (formerly Michigan Radio). Adam was born and raised in Michigan and graduated from Western Michigan University. Before returning to his home state last year, he covered rural and small communities in Colorado and labor and employment in Indiana. He has received a fellowship to attend NICAR this year and has taught multiple hands-on data visualization courses at past IRE conferences.

Daniel Schuman, POPVOX Foundation

Daniel Schuman is an expert on government openness, transparency, and accountability at the federal level. He runs the Congressional Data Coalition, coordinates a federal transparency & accountability coalition, and is responsible for websites like everycrsreport.com. He is governance director at the POPVOX Foundation, previously policy director at Demand Progress Education Fund, and worked for the lamented Sunlight Foundation and on Capitol Hill.

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httr2 is an R package that helps you generate and perform HTTP requests then process the responses. In this talk, I'll introduce you to httr2 and the basics of HTTP, so you can learn what powers so much of the modern internet, and how you can work with it from R.

httr2 is the successor to httr and has been under development for around two years. Compared to httr, httr2 has an explicit request object which leads to a more familiar interface where you can iteratively build up complex requests with the pipe. There's no need to stop using httr, as we'll continue to maintain it for many years to come, but for new projects, I'd highly recommend giving httr2 a shot.

Speaker

Hadley Wickham, Posit

Hadley is chief scientist at Posit PBC, winner of the 2019 COPSS award and a member of the R Foundation. He builds tools to make data science easier, faster, and more fun. His work includes packages for data science (like the tidyverse) and principled software development (e.g. roxygen2, testthat, and pkgdown). He is also a writer, educator, and speaker promoting the use of R for data science.

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This panel will provide actionable information to help journalists follow the money and uncover political influence, from who is seeking to influence policy to U.S. elections. Panelists will share a wide range of investigative techniques and tools, walking participants through a simple recipe of creating compelling investigative stories exposing political influence. Learn the ins and outs of where to find what information, as well as potential pitfalls. Resources covered will include campaign finance data, lobbying disclosures and other public records.

Speakers

Anna Massoglia, OpenSecrets

Anna Massoglia is the editorial and investigations manager at OpenSecrets. Her research areas also include foreign influence and investigations into opaque spending networks. Anna holds degrees in political science and psychology from North Carolina State University and a J.D. from the University of the District of Columbia School of Law. Previously, Anna worked as a research analyst and editor at Bloomberg BNA.

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Ben Wieder, McClatchy/Miami Herald

Ben Wieder is an investigative reporter for McClatchy and the Miami Herald and oversees McClatchy's data fellowship program. He reports on financial crimes, real estate and political influence. He previously worked at the Center for Public Integrity and Stateline.

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K. Sophie Will, CQ Roll Call

K. Sophie Will is CQ Roll Call's congressional action reporter and the Utah Investigative Journalism Project's Alicia Patterson fellow. Previously, she was the National Parks Reporter for USA Today through Report for America. The award-winning Utah native graduated from Boston University with bylines found in the Deseret News, Boston Globe, AP, Thomson Reuters, HuffPost, WGBH and more.

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State and local governments have agreed to national settlements with companies that made, distributed, or sold opioid painkillers. The settlements total over $50 billion and are meant to be spent on addiction treatment and prevention. But we know from the history of the tobacco settlements that money doesn't always go toward its intended purpose. That's where journalists come in. We can track this money and hold elected officials accountable for using it toward one of the greatest public health crises of our time. In this session, attendees will be introduced to half a dozen national databases that can facilitate their reporting, as well as guidelines and reporter forums that can serve as resources. They'll also hear from local reporters in Pennsylvania and Maine about examples of ways they used data and public records to tell this story.

Speakers

Emily Bader, The Maine Monitor

Emily Bader is the health care and general assignment reporter for the Maine Monitor. Previously, she covered health for the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine, where she was a USC Center for Health Journalism Data Fellow. Her work has been recognized by the Maine Press Association, the New England Newspaper & Press Association and the Maine Public Health Association. She is a graduate of Wellesley College.

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Ed Mahon, Spotlight PA

Ed Mahon is an investigative reporter at Spotlight PA, where he covers the opioid epidemic, addiction treatment and medical cannabis. His reporting has earned national recognition, including a a 2021 investigative award from the Institute for Nonprofit News and a 2023 health policy award from the Association of Health Care Journalists. In his free time, he coaches soccer and works on the Rubik’s Cube with his kids.

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Ashton Mara, Reporting on Addiction, 100 Days in Appalachia

Ashton Marra is the co-founder of Reporting on Addiction, a collaborative project working to train journalists in solutions-focused journalism methods that help break cycles of stigma often perpetuated through media coverage of our communities. Ashton is also a teaching assistant professor in the West Virginia University Reed College of Media and the executive editor of 100 Days in Appalachia, a national Edward R. Murrow award-winning publication. Find us on most social media platforms @ReportingonAddiction.

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Aneri Pattani, KFF Health News

Aneri Pattani is a senior correspondent with KFF Health News, a national nonprofit covering U.S. health care and policy. She specializes in mental health and substance use reporting. Over the past year, she's led a series of stories about how local governments are using -- and misusing -- billions of dollars in opioid settlement funds. Her work spans text and audio and has been featured in The New York Times, NPR and CNN, among other outlets.

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Panelists will discuss Grist's investigation to reconstruct 8.1 million acres of state trust lands, currently benefiting 14 land-grant universities, taken from nearly 125 Indigenous nations. These lands now produce millions of dollars a year for universities through timber harvesting, oil and gas, mineral extraction, and agriculture. We’ll tell you about our research process, the difficulties of tracing data across hundreds of years of history, and the possibilities of working with our public dataset.

Speakers

Clayton Aldern, Grist

Clayton Aldern is a senior data reporter at Grist. His writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Economist, Scientific American, Logic, The Guardian and elsewhere. He holds a master's in neuroscience and a master's in public policy from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. His book "The Weight of Nature," on the effects of climate change on neurobiology, brain health and cognition, will be published by Dutton in April 2024.

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Maria Parazo Rose, Grist

Maria Parazo Rose (she/her) graduated with a master’s degree from MIT’s science writing program and is now a reporter and spatial data analyst at Grist, where she makes maps about Indigenous affairs, conservation and resource extraction. Her work can be found in publications like NPR, the Allegheny Front, Popular Science and New York Focus.

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Does your investigation contain complex legal questions? Unsure of how to proceed? Bring your questions for a personal discussion with some prominent media law experts.

Speakers

Chad Bowman, Ballard Spahr LLP

Chad Bowman is a media lawyer at Ballard Spahr, LLP, in Washington, D.C., and has represented clients in state and federal courts around the country in defamation, privacy, copyright, subpoena, access, FOIA, and related First Amendment matters. He also advises journalists about publication risk, reviewing draft news scripts, articles, books, and other content, as well as advising about newsgathering and intellectual property issues.

Eric Feder, Davis Wright Tremaine

Adam Marshall, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Adam A. Marshall is a senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, where his work includes government transparency litigation in federal and state courts. Adam is a member of the 2022–24 federal FOIA Advisory Committee, and has authored several writings on FOIA. He is a graduate of The George Washington School of Law and Kalamazoo College.

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Maggie Mulvihill, Boston University

Maggie Mulvihill is a veteran reporter, data journalism trainer, news entrepreneur, First Amendment advocate and attorney. She has been a member of the BU Journalism faculty since 2009, where she developed the Journalism Department’s first data journalism course and teaches the Law and Ethics of Media and reporting classes. Among other news outlets, her work has appeared in the Associated Press, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, NBC Digital and others.

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The speed at which new generative AI tools have been released is dizzying. While it is still early in their development, these powerful tools have already shown promise for helping augment the work of data journalists. We will look at specific examples of how journalists are using ChatGPT, Github Copilot and other novel AI tools to rapidly generate code, interrogate documents and do things we weren't able to do before. And we will also take care to highlight how NOT to use these tools, and how they should work within your newsroom's AI policies (your newsroom has AI policies, right?).

Speaker

Jon Keegan, The Markup

Jon Keegan is an investigative data journalist at The Markup. Previously he worked at The Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and The Wall Street Journal, where he ran the award-winning interactive graphics team.

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Data can be a powerful way to illustrate the impacts of human society on our climate and environment. But it’s also a key tool for holding authorities accountable for the promises they make about protecting the environment and those living in it. On this panel, journalists will speak about how to use data to hold those in power accountable for environmental disasters and a changing climate.

Speakers

Clayton Aldern, Grist

Clayton Aldern is a senior data reporter at Grist. His writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, The Economist, Scientific American, Logic, The Guardian and elsewhere. He holds a master's in neuroscience and a master's in public policy from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. His book "The Weight of Nature," on the effects of climate change on neurobiology, brain health and cognition, will be published by Dutton in April 2024.

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Dillon Bergin, MuckRock

Dillon Bergin is MuckRock's data reporter. He uses data and public records to power investigative reporting. Dillon was a member of the Documenting COVID-19 team, a project funded by MuckRock and the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. Before that, he was a Report for America corps member with Searchlight New Mexico and a Fulbright Germany Journalism Fellow.

Connect: GitHub, LinkedIn

Savanna Strott, Public Health Watch

Savanna Strott is a Las Vegas-based reporter who covers environmental health. She is a Livingston Award finalist, and her work has been published by outlets including The Nevada Independent, Grist, Business Insider and the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

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Emily Zentner, The California Newsroom

Emily Zentner is the data journalist for the statewide public and nonprofit media collaborative The California Newsroom, where she works with partner newsrooms on investigative stories and training reporters to use data skills in their reporting. Her work primarily focuses on criminal justice and climate stories. She was previously data reporter at CapRadio in Sacramento, where she reported on wildfire, climate change and police mishandling of sexual assault cases.

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This session will help journalists keep their finger on the pulse of propaganda and foreign influence operations. Tracking the spread of foreign propaganda has become more important than ever with foreign influence increasingly felt across the U.S., ranging from federal lobbying to state ballot measures and digital media. This session would help journalists know what to look out for when they are targeted by foreign propaganda campaigns and walk attendees through how to unlock insights from billions of dollars in spending on operations reported in Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) and lobbying filings, state-level records, gift disclosures, digital ad archives, personal financial disclosures, visitor logs, corporate databases and more!

Speakers

Taylor Giorno, The Hill

Taylor Giorno covers how businesses seek to shape U.S. policy — and vice versa — as the business and lobbying reporter at The Hill. She previously reported on money in politics for OpenSecrets, focusing on campaign finance, lobbying and foreign influence. Born and raised in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Taylor graduated with a B.A. from the University of Virginia in 2016 and an M.A. from Johns Hopkins SAIS in 2019.

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Mark Greenblatt, Arizona State University

Anna Massoglia, OpenSecrets

Anna Massoglia is the editorial and investigations manager at OpenSecrets. Her research areas also include foreign influence and investigations into opaque spending networks. Anna holds degrees in political science and psychology from North Carolina State University and a J.D. from the University of the District of Columbia School of Law. Previously, Anna worked as a research analyst and editor at Bloomberg BNA.

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Rowan Philp, Global Investigative Journalism Network

Rowan Philp is GIJN’s senior reporter. He was formerly chief reporter for South Africa’s Sunday Times. As a foreign correspondent, he has reported on news, politics, corruption and conflict from more than two dozen countries around the world.

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Newsrooms all over the world are running to secure Open Source Intelligence analysts to power up their investigative teams. In 2023 many media organisations have invested in hirings, tools and new teams in both US and Europe. But what is OSINT and what can this investigative branch really add to reporting? In this session, speakers will dicsuss how they are using OSINT/CAR investigative tools and practices to enrich their reporting projects.

Speakers

Sarah Cahlan, The Washington Post

Sarah Cahlan is a video reporter on the Visual Forensics team at The Washington Post. Her work combines open source and forensic technologies with traditional journalism and documentary filmmaking. She shared in a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the January 6 insurrection and a duPont for her coverage of the clearing of Lafayette Square. She started VF in 2020 after a year on the Fact Checker desk where she produced ambitious video fact checks.

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Sam Joiner, The Financial Times

Sam Joiner leads the visual stories and investigations team at the Financial Times — an interdisciplinary group of journalists using computational tools and traditional reporting to produce explainers, investigations and deep dives in visual formats.

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Meg Kelly, The Washington Post

Daniele Palumbo, BBC

Daniele is a Data and Investigative journalist for BBC News and BBC Verify. He specialises in open-source technologies, computer-assisted reporting and data journalism, helping the BBC newsroom in using new technologies in its reporting.

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Brenna Smith, The Baltimore Banner

Brenna Smith is an investigative reporter for The Baltimore Banner, focusing on using visuals and open source intelligence (OSINT) to tell local Baltimore stories. Prior, she was a Visual Investigations Fellow with the New York Times video team, where she was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on fatal traffic stops by police. Brenna has also worked as a guest trainer and researcher with the investigative collective Bellingcat.

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While the U.S. Supreme Court grabs a lot of the public attention, more than 95 percent of cases are filed in state courts, which hand down thousands of rulings affecting ordinary people’s daily lives. But court transparency is spotty and newsroom budgets are constrained. At this panel hear about existing resources, tips on wrangling access and data, and story examples and ideas for covering courts and justice locally.

Speakers

Michael Lissner, Free Law Project

Michael Lissner is a co-founder and the executive director of Free Law Project, a nonprofit that brings innovation and equity to the legal ecosystem. Free Law Project uses open tools and data to impact tens of millions of people each month. Michael is a FastCase 50 Honoree and has been awarded the Public Access to Information Award from the American Association of Law Librarians. He is an endurance athlete, having completed numerous long-distance challenges.

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Danielle Ohl, Spotlight PA

Danielle is an investigative reporter for Spotlight PA, where she covers the justice system. Most recently, she has focused on indigent defense, aging in prison and the criminalization of mental illness. Previously, she worked for the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, where she earned a Pulitzer Prize special citation with her newsroom for covering the mass shooting of her colleagues. She is a long-suffering Philadelphia sports fan and mother to cats Doom and Wednesday.

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Nancy Watzman, Lynx LLC/State Court Report

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Too often journalists are stonewalled when requesting information under the Freedom of Information Act about how the federal government is operating at the national, state, and local levels. This session will cover strategies to find success with FOIA, including how to get agencies respond to your requests more quickly, when you might want to look for records that could be public in other places, and where you can find resources to help you appeal denials.

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

Paula Lavigne, ESPN

Jason Leopold, Bloomberg News

Jason Leopold is senior investigative reporter at Bloomberg News. He is a two-time Pulitzer prize finalist, a recipient of IRE's FOI award and was inducted into the National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame. Leopold's FOIA work was profiled on the front page of The New York Times and he has testified before Congress about FOIA's shortcomings. TRAC has identified Leopold as the "most active individual FOIA litigator in the United States."

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Adam Marshall, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press

Adam A. Marshall is a senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, where his work includes government transparency litigation in federal and state courts. Adam is a member of the 2022–24 federal FOIA Advisory Committee, and has authored several writings on FOIA. He is a graduate of The George Washington School of Law and Kalamazoo College.

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Kate Martin, APM Reports

Kate Martin is the senior data reporter at APM Reports. Her work over two decades has sparked reforms, resignations, firings, criminal indictments and convictions. At least five state laws or legal precedents have changed because of her work. Recently her work filing hundreds of records requests led to the Consumer Product Safety Commission to propose new safety requirements for nursing pillows, which killed 160+ infants since 2007.

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This is the complement to the usual "data for TV" panel. When I started in television and expressed some worry that I didn't have any experience, my hiring manager told me "Just focus on doing good journalism -- we'll take care of the rest." This will be a talk about what 'the rest' is!

This talk will generally cover the ways we see things are different for us than for our colleagues in print and digital. This could include things like:

• The structure of our work/teams within television newsrooms
• Making a home for yourself in television culture
• Unexpected challenges to the medium and/or this sector of the industry
• Approaches to data on the screen -- and in the ear
• The ways in which TV has been unexpectedly cool
• Working with the other stations your conglomerate owns
• Our goals/things we want to do better

Speakers

Rosie Cima, Scripps News

Rosie Cima manages and reports for the data team at Scripps News, supporting the Scripps News national investigative team’s award-winning tv journalism. She's been with the company since 2018. She was previously a Knight Data Journalism Fellow at the Center for Public Integrity, a staff writer at Priceonomics, and as a politics blogger at MapLight. When not working on journalism, Rosie writes, performs, and records music.

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Andrew Lehren, CUNY Newmark Graduate School of Journalism

Andy Lehren, former senior editor, NBC News investigative team: Implant Files, FinCEN Files, national, international stories. Pulitzer Center senior fellow. Former New York Times: Snowden files. Wikileaks diplomatic cables, part of best-seller “Open Secrets.” Covered military, policing, terrorism, and more. Honors include four IRE awards, Peabody, Polk, Emmy, contributed to Pulitzer. Specializes in data journalism. Director of @cunyjschool investigative program.

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Scott Pham, CBS News

Scott Pham is an investigative data reporter and data team coordinator for CBS News and Stations. He's previously worked at BuzzFeed News and Reveal/Center for Investigative Reporting.

Connect: LinkedIn

Maia Rosenfeld, ABC News

Maia Rosenfeld is a data journalist on the ABC Owned Television Stations national data team, based at 6abc in Philadelphia. She integrates statistics into 6abc's daily coverage and investigations, wrangles data into scoops for all ABC stations, and reports national stories with ABC News. Previously, she was an investigative data reporter for the Scripps Washington Bureau. Her programming language of choice is Python and her favorite library is BeautifulSoup.

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As firms race to adopt generative AI to get an edge over competitors, reporters are designing experiments to measure the harms these technologies pose to consumers.

This panel showcases three original investigations into statistical bias embedded within generative AI products.

Victoria Turk and Leonard Nicoletti will discuss their respective approaches to testing AI-generated images for stereotypes. Leon Yin will share how to audit [REDACTED].

Meredith Broussard will moderate a discussion between the panelists on their approaches to reporting on state-of-the-art technologies critically, systematically, and precisely.

Speakers

Meredith Broussard, New York University

Meredith Broussard is an associate professor at New York University. Her books include "More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech," and "Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World." Her research focuses on artificial intelligence in investigative reporting, with particular interests in AI ethics and using data analysis for social good.

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Leonardo Nicoletti, Bloomberg News

Leonardo is a reporter at Bloomberg News. He works with data and visual storytelling to report on issues at the intersection of technology and society. Leonardo’s work has been cited in official documents about AI risk from national governments, NGO's, and international bodies such as the United Nations and IMF. His work is cited by several academic research papers and used as a main reference for AI-best practices at dozens of institutions like IBM and MIT.

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Victoria Turk, Rest of World

Victoria Turk is a journalist based in London. She is the features director at Rest of World, where she oversees longform stories about technology globally. Before joining Rest of World, she worked for publications including Wired, New Scientist and Vice.

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Leon Yin, Bloomberg

Leon Yin is an award-winning journalist at Bloomberg focused on data-driven investigations into AI. He writes Inspect Element: a practitioners guide to auditing algorithms. Previously, he was a reporter at The Markup.

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This session has the purpose to offer journalists ideas to search in international datasets and resources for local stories. This can be also an invitation to think more possible cross-border stories from a local perspective.

Speakers

Agustin Armendariz, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

Augie is the senior data reporter at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

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Eva Constantaras, Lighthouse Reports

Eva Constantaras is a data journalist specialized in building collaborative investigative teams. These teams have reported from across Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa on accountability issues ranging from algorithmic bias and food insecurity to extractive industries and sanctions evasion. As a Google Data Journalism Scholar and a Fulbright Fellow, she developed a course for investigative data journalism in high-risk environments.

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Emma Prest, Independent journalist

As a former CTO and long time data wrangler, Emma supports non-profit newsrooms to be more strategic, collaborative and consistent. She coaches data teams and assists data heavy investigations. Emma was the CTO and CPO at OCCRP. Prior to that she was the Executive Director of DataKind UK which she built from the ground up. She has also worked for Tactical Tech, the Campaign for Freedom of Information, Amnesty UK and The Independent Newspaper.

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Anastasia Valeeva, Newsday Media Group

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This panel will explore what accessibility means in a newsroom and how to integrate accessible data and visualization practices in your work. Drawing on the expertise of both journalists and accessibility experts, you'll learn the basics of accessibility and have ample opportunity to ask specific questions about your own applications. Come start a conversation!

Speakers

Samantha Evans, International Association of Accessibility Professionals

Holden Foreman, None

Holden Foreman (he/him) was The Washington Post's first accessibility engineer in 2023. Before that, he served on The Post's news engineering team supporting live election results coverage from 2021-22. He graduated from Stanford University in 2021. He accepted a buyout and left The Post at the end of 2023, but he is still passionate about web accessibility and media. In his free time he enjoys running, browsing Spotify, writing Letterboxd reviews and studying languages.

Connect: LinkedIn, GitHub, Website

Emilia Ruzicka, University of Virginia, Freelance Data Journalist

Emilia Ruzicka is a data journalist, designer and producer pursuing an MA in media, culture and technology and certificate in digital humanities at University of Virginia. Alongside their studies, Emilia conducts research concerning AI and journalism, data governance and digital risk. Emilia’s work can be found in magazines, newspapers, online publications and podcasts. Their research interests include data ethics, accessibility, queerness and community-building.

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Even the most advanced data analysis can still be tripped up by the age-old maxim: Garbage in, garbage out. And let's face it, every dataset has problems. We'll walk attendees how to instill a healthy data-skeptical approach to your reporting.

You'll learn strategies for identifying:

• The strengths and weaknesses of your data
• Workable weaknesses
• Deal breakers
• When the weaknesses are the story

Speakers

Chad Day, Associated Press

Chad Day is the chief elections analyst for The Associated Press and a member of AP’s Decision Desk. He writes about politics and elections and also teaches data journalism at Georgetown University. He previously worked at The Wall Street Journal, where he was part of a team awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting.

Connect: GitHub

Larry Fenn, Associated Press

Larry Fenn is a data journalist at the Associated Press. His background is in mathematics and statistics.

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Meghan Hoyer, The Washington Post

Meghan Hoyer leads the Washington Post's data reporting team, which works with reporters and editors across the newsroom. She joined The Post in 2021.

Kae Petrin, Chalkbeat

Kae is a data and graphics reporter on Chalkbeat’s data visuals team, where they collaborate with local reporters to tell data-driven stories about education. They co-founded the Trans Journalists Association and now serve as President and Executive Director. They have contributed data journalism to reporting recognized by the Education Writers Association, LION Publishers and others. Previously, they produced graphics, tools and investigative reporting in St. Louis.

Connect: LinkedIn, Github, Portfolio, Team blog

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Join Hilke Schellmann and Meredith Broussard discuss Schellmann's new investigative book "The Algorithm: How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired and Why We Need to Fight Back Now"

Six years ago Schellmann heard from a Lyft driver that they were interviewed by a "robot." She went down a rabbit hole and found out that companies are using AI in hiring and to monitor workers at unprecedented levels without much oversight or the public's knowledge.

In this chat, she will reveal how she reported and found the personal stories in her book and how she tested these tools herself and found out that many do more harm than good. Participants will also get an inside look on how investigative journalists can hold AI tools accountable (without any coding required!) and how to tell compelling stories.

Speakers

Meredith Broussard, New York University

Meredith Broussard is an associate professor at New York University. Her books include "More Than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender, and Ability Bias in Tech," and "Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World." Her research focuses on artificial intelligence in investigative reporting, with particular interests in AI ethics and using data analysis for social good.

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Hilke Schellmann, Freelance Reporter/ NYU Journalism Professor

Hilke Schellmann, is an Emmy award winning investigative reporter, and assistant professor of journalism at NYU. In her book, The Algorithm: How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired, And Why We Need To Fight Back, she investigates the rise of AI in the world of work. Drawing on exclusive information from whistleblowers, documents and real‑world tests, Schellmann discovers that many of the algorithms are biased, racist, and do more harm than good.

Connect: LinkedIn

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Data reporters share their tips and tricks for revealing inequities through data journalism and talk about how to do a story even if a dataset doesn't exist or it doesn't have demographic identifiers. They'll also highlight common errors and suggest strategies for skeptical inquiry beyond the data itself. While data can be a powerful reporting tool, it is a source with the same potential flaws as anything else created by humans.

Speakers

Jayme Fraser, USA TODAY / Gannett

Jayme Fraser is an investigative data journalist for USA TODAY who lives in the Rocky Mountain West. Her work has spurred congressional hearings, changes to state laws, new federal rules, updates to hospital policies, and helped free a man wrongfully convicted of infant murder. She also has taught courses and workshops on a variety of journalistic techniques, from narrative reporting to data analysis, and serves on the advisory board of Equal Access Public Media.

Connect: LinkedIn

Ilica Mahajan, The Marshall Project

Greg Morton, The Baltimore Banner

Greg Morton serves as a data reporter at the Baltimore Banner, focusing on data-driven accountability reporting. Prior to joining the Banner, Greg had stops at ProPublica, NPR, and the Washington Post.

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Max Siegelbaum, Documented

Max Siegelbaum oversees the editorial content at Documented. He has written for local newspapers in Denver and Pittsburgh, The Guardian, Foreign Policy and STAT, among others. His reporting for Documented led to the divestment of millions of public dollars from private prisons and contributed to policy changes in New York State. He has won awards from the Deadline Club, the Edward R. Murrow awards and was nominated for a Livingston Award.

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Dian Zhang, USA Today

Dian Zhang is a senior data reporter with USA Today, where she uses data and quantitative analysis to tell stories. She graduated from Columbia Journalism School and is based in Florida.

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Using data from New York police misconduct records, the USA Today Network embarked on the first-ever investigation of police vehicle crashes in the state, finding that well over 335 crashes took place in Syracuse alone between 2013 and 2022. Most crashes resulted in no discipline for officers involved, and two-thirds of the officers who were disciplined got only a written reprimand. In the past nine months, a team of USA Today Network journalists, in partnership with Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and The Central Current, used data tools like Excel and Google Pinpoint, mined court documents and conducted dozens of interviews with attorneys, victims and police officials to publish a comprehensive account of how officers put haste over public safety, raising questions about their training, discipline policies and their ability to protect civilians on the road.

Speakers

Kayla Canne, Democrat and Chronicle

Kayla Canne covers public safety from the community's perspective for the Democrat and Chronicle. She is an alumnus of Report for America, where she exposed mismanagement of a multi-million-dollar affordable housing program and unlawful discrimination against low-income tenants in New Jersey. Outside of journalism, she proudly served in Ghana with the Peace Corps for two years.

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Nausheen Husain, Syracuse University

Nausheen Husain writes about civil rights issues, incarceration and security, and inequities. Husain focuses on Muslim communities and the past and present 'War on Terror.' Husain is currently a freelance journalist and an assistant professor at Syracuse University, teaching journalism with an emphasis on data analysis, underreported communities and civil rights. Husain's academic research focuses on the news processes and coverage choices during the ongoing American-led 'War on Terror.'

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Beryl Lipton, USA Today

David Robinson, USA Today Network

David Robinson is an investigative reporter for the USA Today Network New York, which consists of more than 16 newspapers and news websites across New York, including the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle and The Journal News in Westchester County.

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Sarah Taddeo, USA Today Network

Sarah Taddeo is the New York state team editor for the USA Today Network, leading a team of five journalists covering New York healthcare, jobs, transportation, politics, police accountability and consumer rights. She previously worked at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle and graduated from Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

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Jodi Upton, Syracuse University

Jodi Upton is the Knight Chair at Syracuse University, teaching investigative/data journalism classes. She is a consultant for the Knight Commission and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Her research includes college athletics’ spending and gender inequities in college sports, police misconduct in New York and mass killings. A transparency advocate, Upton and her students have filed more than 1,000 open records requests in recent years.

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Have you ever wondered how much money your local candidates raise? Are you curious about what interests fund school board trustees, city council reps and county judges? Join Professor Christian McDonald and three student interns at the University of Texas for a discussion about their Local Campaign Finance Project, where they set out to create a searchable database of campaign finance reports in Texas using DocumentCloud. Learn about challenges they faced, successes they found and obstacles they’ve yet to overcome. Get a live walk-through of the reports they’ve collected so far.

This session is good for: Anyone interested in public information request projects, document management or campaign finance.

Speakers

Athena Hawkins, University of Texas at Austin

Athena Hawkins is a senior journalism honors student at the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked as a student reporter, a writing coach and a content producer for Texas Law. She is passionate about public information, migration and human rights. As a data technician under Professor Christian McDonald, she specializes in document collection. Her coding language of choice is R, and her favorite visualization tool is Datawrapper.

Connect: LinkedIn, GitHub

Karina Kumar, University of Texas at Austin

Karina Kumar is a junior journalism student at the University of Texas at Austin with a certificate in Elements of Computing. She has worked at The Daily Texan, Texas Tasty and is now the editorial intern for the Alcalde magazine. Under Professor Christian McDonald, she has worked on projects with local campaign finance reports, school attendance records and arrest records and explored document extraction tools and used R and Python to clean, visualize and export data sets.

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Christian McDonald, University of Texas at Austin

Christian McDonald is an associate professor of practice and the innovation director in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches classes about data, coding and news products. His last newsroom position was as data and online projects editor at the Austin American-Statesman. In his 28 years in journalism, he also worked at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, East Valley (Arizona) Tribune and the Longview (Texas) News-Journal.

Connect: X, GitHub, GitHub (org), LinkedIn, Mastadon, Threads

Carolyn Parmer, University of Texas at Austin

Carolyn Parmer is a fourth-year journalism student at the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked as a Life & Arts reporter at The Daily Texan, a writing coach and social media manager at the Moody Writing Support Program, and as the co-editor of photography at Afterglow Magazine. Her work under Professor Christian McDonald includes analyzing local campaign finance reports from Texas entities and hosting a data journalism podcast.

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Description coming soon.

Speakers

Jennifer LaFleur, University of California Berkeley

Jennifer LaFleur teaches data journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

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Pratheek Rebala, Center for Public Integrity

Jonathan Stray, UC Berkeley

Jonathan Stray is a Senior Scientist at the Center for Human Compatible AI at UC Berkeley, where he works on the design of recommender systems for better personalized news and information. Previously, he taught the dual masters degree in computer science and journalism at Columbia University, worked as an editor at the Associated Press, and built document mining software for investigative journalism.

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For journalists reporting on our own communities, our proximity can give us unprecedented access and insight to stories others might overlook, but that often means challenging longstanding ideas of objectivity. Join this session to hear how reporters report on the people around them with unique nuance, depth and expertise.

Speakers

Grace Asiegbu, Injustice Watch

Emmanuel Martinez, The Washington Post

Libby Seline, Independent journalist

Libby Seline was a data reporter for the San Antonio Express-News between July 2021 and January 2024. Before coming to San Antonio, she attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and worked for The New York Times, the Salt Lake Tribune and Lincoln Journal Star.

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John-John Williams IV, The Baltimore Banner

John-John Williams IV is a diversity, equity and inclusion reporter at The Baltimore Banner. A native of Syracuse, N.Y. and a graduate of Howard University, he has lived in Baltimore for the past 17 years.

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Data reporters are very familiar with different portals and datasets online that exist for public use — and we use them all the time. But one often untapped area of investigative and data reporting lies in historical data and archives. By tapping into historical archives and datasets, we can tie the past to the present in a more direct way, pulling it into visuals, fact-checking, data reporting and narrative writing. This session will touch on different resources for jumping head-first into historical records and working with archives, including documents, data, and maps. How to find and use archives, how to find out how they change over time, how to meet the archivists, geneologists and datakeepers you’ll need, how to access records manually or programmatically, how to create your own datasets from archives, how to maintain those datasets, and how to connect the past to your present day reporting.

This session is ideal for anyone interested in getting started with archives, with no experience necessary. If you have some experience, you will learn invaluable tips and tricks. We hope you join us!

Speakers

Barbara Gray, Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Barbara Gray is chief librarian and associate professor of investigative research methods at Newmark J-School at City University New York. She is the former director of news research at The New York Times.

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Cam Rodriguez, Illinois Answers Project

Cam Rodriguez is a data reporter at the Illinois Answers Project, an investigative solutions newsroom with the Better Government Association. Cam previously worked with teams at Chalkbeat, USA TODAY, South Side Weekly, Freep, WTTW and others. She graduated with degrees in journalism from DePaul University, managing its award-winning student magazine, 14 East. When she’s not digging in archives, she's usually playing with maps, watching rom-coms or exploring the Midwest.

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Margot Williams, The Intercept

Margot Williams is a news researcher at The Intercept. Over a 40-plus-year career, she has worked as a researcher and investigative reporter at Time Inc, the Poughkeepsie Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the Outlaw Ocean Project, The Prosecution Project and The Intercept.

Connect: X, LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/margotwilliams, Mastadon, Substack

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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

Adam Rhodes, IRE & NICAR

Adam M. Rhodes is a first-generation Cuban American journalist whose work primarily focuses on queer people and the criminal justice 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. They have been published in outlets including The Nation, BuzzFeed News and The Washington Post.

Francisco Vara-Orta, IRE & NICAR

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TAP into our nearly 2 billion records and learn about collaboration opps. The Accountability Project from The Center for Public Integrity standardizes records across the country to help reporters research people, organizations and addresses. Come learn how it can help your newsroom and how you can collaborate with us.

Speaker

Jennifer LaFleur, University of California Berkeley

Jennifer LaFleur teaches data journalism at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.

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Whether it’s for a months-long investigation or a quicker-turn enterprise piece, you want your data analysis to be rock solid. We’ll talk about the best ways to vet your findings and avoid dangerous mistakes and assumptions. Come ready to share your own ideas so we can learn from each other.

Speakers

Monica Cordero Sancho, Investigate Midwest

Mónica Cordero is an investigative and data reporter for Investigate Midwest and the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk collaborative project. She has contributed to The New York Times, Univision, openDemocracy and Bloomberg Businessweek. She holds a master's degree from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and is an alumna of the Lede Program at Columbia University. Before moving to the United States, she worked at Grupo Nación in Costa Rica.

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Holly Hacker, KFF Health News

Holly Hacker is data editor at KFF Health News (formerly Kaiser Health News) in Washington, DC. Before that she was an investigative reporter at The Dallas Morning News focusing on data analysis. She also covered education for many years in Texas, Missouri and California.

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Steven Rich, The Washington Post

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This session will showcases some data, graphic and reporting tools that will make your life easier as a data journalist, graphics reporter or visual journalist. You'll learn about as many useful tools as possible in 60 minutes.

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Chris Alcantara, The Washington Post

Adrián Blanco Ramos, The Washington Post

Adrián Blanco Ramos is a graphics reporter in the graphics department at The Washington Post.

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Kati Perry, The Washington Post

Kati Perry is a graphics reporter at the Washington Post covering (mostly) politics.

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Carson TerBush, The Washington Post

Carson TerBush is a designer and graphics reporter at the Washington Post, where she started as an intern on the design team. She has also interned as an education reporter at Chalkbeat Indiana. Carson is a graduate of Indiana University and now lives in Washington D.C.

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Daniel Wolfe, Washington Post

Daniel Wolfe is a graphics reporter for the Washington Post. His past includes data and graphics reporting at CNN and Quartz, as well as work at the aerospace company Planet Labs. Curiosity drives his work developing meaningful and memorable visual pieces.

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Journalists have used satellite data to map flooding, illegal deforestation, methane emissions, high-risk zones for future epidemics and much more. We’ll discuss how to access and analyze stacks of satellite data, with platforms like Google Earth Engine, to produce investigations that break new ground with help from the sky.

Speakers

Carl Churchill, The Wall Street Journal

Carl Churchill is a graphics reporter with The Wall Street Journal. He works primarily on issues relating to climate, weather, ecology, and U.S. news. He entered journalism after working for Woodwell Climate Research Center, a climate science organization based in Massachusetts. He holds in a masters in GIS from Arizona State University.

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Laura Kurtzberg, Florida International University

Laura Kurtzberg is an information designer and cartographer. She specialized in interactive maps, data visualizations and web applications for news and storytelling. Her work has been published on Ambiental Media, InfoAmazonia and Mongabay. She is also a professor of practice at Florida International University's School of Journalism and Media in Miami, Florida, where she teaches courses on data visualization and technology.

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Deborah Nelson, University of Maryland

Deborah Nelson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist based at the University of Maryland, home of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism. Most recently, she co-authored “Bat Lands,” a Reuters series that analyzed satellite imagery to examine the link between ecological conditions and disease outbreaks worldwide. She is a former IRE president.

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With the 2024 presidential election season underway, political polls seem basically inescapable – and with good reason. A well-designed survey can lend important insight into the public’s views and experiences. For journalists, working with high-quality survey data can inspire story ideas and add deeper context to reporting, while mistakenly using a shoddy poll can distort the facts and create confusion. We’ll give attendees the tools to tell the difference. While examples will focus on the 2024 election season, all information can be applied to surveys more broadly.

This session is good for anyone who is fairly new to working with public opinion polls and would like to level up their understanding. It will cover what polls can tell us -- and what they can't; and how to assess survey quality using metrics like questionnaire design, sample weighting and survey mode. We’ll also give tips on how to write about survey results in a fair and balanced way.

Speakers

Christopher Baronavski, Pew Research Center

Christopher Baronavski is a senior developer and editorial feature lead at Pew Research Center.

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Katherine Schaeffer, Pew Research Center

Katherine Schaeffer is a research analyst at Pew Research Center. She writes for the Center’s data journalism blog, where she focuses on the intersection of news and public opinion polling. She previously worked as a journalist covering public education.

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