The IRE workshop in Birmingham this past weekend was an extremely valuable assortment of useful information, tools to use and experiences shared from some of the best in the business. Overall, the conference was an amazing experience. The conference concluded with a wrap-up session given by the moderator of the conference from IRE, Mark Horvit, who is also IRE’s executive director.
The final session was restricted by the end time of the conference, and did not contain as much information as many of the other sessions. However, it did have some useful information pertaining to what IRE can do for journalists.
Horvit began by asking all the participants at the conference to complete evaluation forms so that they could make future conferences better and to report back to those who have given grants that help underwrite the conferences. The grants keep the price of the conference at $50. IRE’s website offers a lot of useful things for members, and since all of us attended the conference we have membership covered for a year. Their website is IRE.org.
The first tool on their site is the “Extra, Extra” daily blog which showcases a news article that is considered a good example of investigative reporting. These stories are examples of great journalism. The blog takes submissions from anyone, all that is required is one paragraph about what was done and how it was done emailed to extraextra@ire.org. Horvit stressed that this was a great resource that is tagged by categories, has an RSS feed subscription service and the stories in the database go back for many years.
The next tool that was discussed was their resource center. The resource center includes every tip sheet from all of their conferences in either pdf or word format. All speakers at their conferences provide and combine tips that are given to IRE and shared with all of their members. These tip sheets are searchable by topic and many of the sheets also include the speakers email or phone number.
The next tool that was discussed is the stories database from their site, all of the stories ever submitted to their contests are searchable in their database, not just the ones that have won over the years. The authors are required to share how they did what they did. There is also information about computer assisted reporting. IRE is directly involved with the National Institution of CAR, which includes 40 databases that they clean up and make more usable. IRE also sells books and hosts job listings. There is a training blog, which posts lessons, upcoming events, training calendar and they are starting to do online training with monthly webinars planned.
IRE also offers a few fellowships each year, which helps participants pay to attend their conferences, like their conference this summer in Las Vegas. At their national conference they pair students and those new to the field with some of the best in the business. They have very few applicants, so anyone interested should apply for assistance.
Horvit also discussed that IRE has a listserv that will supply anyone who asks a question an answer from on average three people within minutes.
Horvit concluded that involvement with IRE changes careers and lives.

