As some of you know, Aron Pilhofer, who directed IRE's Campaign Finance Information Center, has taken a job as database editor with the Center for Public Integrity in Washington, D.C.
For more than a year, Aron had been busy with IRE and NICAR projects. He revamped the CFIC Web site and launched its two online databases where IRE members can search for federal political campaign contributions and simply click on the contributor's name to see whether the contributor received federal contracts.
Aron revived Tracker, the center's quarterly publication that covers campaign finance reporting, and trained journalists across the country in how to analyze campaign finance data for news reporting.
Aron served as NICAR's in-house open source software guru, promoting the virtues of free software tools with all kinds of strange names - Python, Mandrake, MySQL, TUTOS. When Aron spoke at the annual CAR conference in Philadelphia this year about "World-Class CAR on 99 Cents a Day," he wasn't kidding.
Starting with the next issue of Uplink, Aron will contribute a regular feature focusing on open source software that journalists can use for their work. For starters, he'll write about his experience with OpenOffice, the open source alternative to Microsoft Office that's been garnering some interest on the NICAR-L listserv.
Best wishes in your return to the newsroom, Aron.
Contact David Herzog by e-mail at dherzog@nicar.org.