The Campaign Finance Information Center is in full swing. Data, tips, links and stories are up at the center's Web site, www.campaignfinance.org
Also, coming soon to a mailbox near you will be the Campaign Finance Information Center's newsletter. Stories from the Fall '97 newsletter include reports about states with electronic filing systems, a look at how states are going to inform the public of the connection between money and politics and an explanation of in-kind contributions.
Conferences and Seminars
NICAR is forging ahead with new seminars and new approaches to conferences and workshops. Our annual conference, March 5-8 in Indianapolis, will not only include the usual panels and hands-on classes for beginners to the advanced, but also a set of special half-day sessions that will take in depth looks at how to use electronic information for particular beats.
We also are expanding our seminars for the intermediate range. Earlier this year we did a seminar on education and statistics. In the coming months, we plan to hold seminars on database design and data cleaning, use of SQL servers for the newsroom, mapping software, and business reporting. Watch our website at www.nicar.org for dates and times. For more information on seminars and boot camps, call (573) 882-0684.
NICAR Net
Recent topics on the IRE and NICAR listserv have included campaign finance data, troubles with traffic accident data, ethics, medical investigations and Access tips.
To subscribe to IRE-L or NICAR-L, send e-mail to listproc@lists.missouri.edu
In the body of the message, type: subscribe NICAR-L<your name> subscribe IRE-L<your name>
Also, check out the IRE-L and NICAR-L mailing list archives on our website at www.ire.org and www.nicar.org. You can see posts to both lists organized by thread, author and date. The list archives are available in html or in plain text format.
Reader Response
We are still looking for readers' ideas of how to improve Uplink.
Are there certain columns that you would like to add? Are there certain topics you would like covered? Have you done a story that you think should be featured in an upcoming issue? Do you have something you would like to contribute? A Tech Tip? A column about a CAR story you reported?
Here's your chance. Send comments, critiques and suggestions to Uplink's editor, Jody Sowell, at jody@nicar.org We look forward to hearing from you.