Stabile Seminar

The empirical spine of investigative reporting

Syllabus       Weekly schedule    Tip Sheets / Handouts

Jan. 28

Before class

Take the class survey of skills and interests

Sign up for a membership at Investigative Reporters and Editors. Choose the student membership with nothing filled in for the other publications. Once you're a member, be sure to send a note to jgreen@ire.org requesting your free license for CometDocs, and Tableau if you want it. (It should be available for the Mac soon.) We'll talk about these packages later in the year. You will need access to the members-only portions of the site on the first day of class.

Class outline

Resources

CAR Overview
Finding stories

The best stories for your presentation will be in-depth investigations that relied on an underpinning of analysis, usually of public records or home-made databases. You may not see the numbers in the story, but should pick up on common hints: The use of databases of public records, an analysis that at some point documents the trend.

Your IRE membership will be the best place to start looking, by reviewing stories that interest you in Extra Extra, story library in the resource center, IRE Journal articles and Philip Meyer award winners. Once you find one story, look up that person's byline for more. All stories entered in the IRE contests include a form that describes, in depth, what records and techniques were used. Look in the resource center for those.

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