Bits, Bytes and Barks — Uplink Archive

IRE and NICAR announce two new staff positions: Jeff Porter as the first full-time director of the IRE and NICAR database library and Aron Pilhofer as director of the Campaign Finance Information Center. The organizations are also promoting their upcoming national conference in Philadelphia scheduled for October 11-14.

Bits, Bytes and Barks

Staffing News:

Two journalists took over staff positions at IRE and NICAR this summer. Jeff Porter is the first-ever full-time director of the IRE and NICAR database library.

He's worked more than 20 years in the newspaper industry. As a high school senior, Porter began developing black-and-white photographs in the darkroom of the Batesville Daily Guard, his small Arkansas hometown newspaper. After finishing his degree at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Ark., he became a reporter and editor, and taught journalism at Lyon College in Batesville. He became managing editor of the Batesville paper in 1988. It was in that position that he became interested in computer-assisted reporting.

In 1996, that interest led Porter to work for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in Little Rock, where he served as a computer-assisted reporting specialist, with data analysis, reporting and intranet management duties.

Porter is also an instructor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and helps conduct boot camps on computer-assisted reporting for print and broadcast journalists.

He can be contacted by e-mail at jeff@ire.org. Aron Pilhofer is the new director of the Campaign Finance Information Center. Before joining IRE, he was the computer-assisted reporting coordinator for The News Journal in Wilmington, Del., where he helped lead the paper's census coverage among other projects. Before that, he covered state politics and the New Jersey Legislature from the Gannett state bureau in Trenton.

Pilhofer replaces Ron Nixon, who is now the training director for IRE and NICAR. Pilhofer can be contacted by e-mail at aron@ire.org

NICAR National Conference

Make plans now to attend the NICAR national conference, to be held Oct. 11-14 in Philadelphia.

Conference Highlights include:

- More than 50 panels that touch on every beat: Census, law enforcement, transportation, education, local government, health and more.

- Hands-on classes: Spreadsheets, databases, mapping, SPSS, and SAS.

- Internet training: Important Web sites, search techniques no reporter can do without, backgrounding people and businesses online.

For more information, call IRE and NICAR at 573-882-2042 or visit our conference Web site at www.ire.org/training/philly/. The Web site includes hotel and registration information.