February 18th, 2010 | by Derek Willis | published in IRE
This year’s computer-assisted reporting conference in Phoenix has a couple of new sessions on the schedule. One of them is an idea a couple of us have been pushing for a few years: lightning talks. A staple of technical conferences, lightning talks are based on the notion that while 45-50 minutes presentations are good, sometimes [...]
November 29th, 2009 | by Derek Willis | published in IRE
Anyone in journalism who knows me knows how much of a debt I owe to an organization called Investigative Reporters and Editors. Sure, I liked playing with data before I found out about IRE, but the knowledge and support that I’ve received from IRE training, conferences and members has been the single most positive influence [...]
July 15th, 2009 | by Derek Willis | published in Data, IRE
The folks at Sunlight today announced an effort to build a catalog for national and state datasets, going beyond what Data.gov is doing at the federal level. It’s a worthy effort, and as Clay Johnson notes in the blog post, they’re inviting participation because they are definitely going to need the help. I say that [...]
April 5th, 2007 | by Derek Willis | published in IRE
A few weekends ago Aron Pilhofer of the New York Times and I led a workshop on covering money in politics at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. We’re still polishing our presentations (we’ve got more of these workshops coming up), but here are links to two PDFs on dealing with electronic filings from the Federal [...]
January 10th, 2006 | by Derek Willis | published in IRE, Journalism
NICAR has announced the inaugural winners of the Philip Meyer Journalism Award, “a contest to recognize the best journalism done using social science research methods.” In order, the winners are: Steve Suo, The Oregonian, for “Unnecessary Epidemic“, Chris Adams and Alison Young, Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau, for “Discharged and Dishonored” and The Scoop guest author Matthew [...]