readme.txt (IRE tipsheets on campaign finance)

IRE offers multiple tipsheets to help journalists use databases for investigating local, state, and federal campaign finance, including guidance on accessing data from reluctant officials, analyzing donor information, and cleaning databases for analysis.

IRE offers tipsheets for journalists interested in using databases to cover local campaign finance.

Michael A. Weber, co-author of the IRE Beat Book "Unstacking the Deck: A Reporter's Guide to Campaign Finance," offers a list of Web addresses where you can find local, federal and state campaign finance data in Tipsheet No. 1919.

Tipsheet No. 1222 provides guidance to journalists for learning about campaign contributors and their employers. This tipsheet also explains how to use and sort a donations database to look for story ideas.

In Tipsheet No. 1221 Bob Warner of the Philadelphia Daily News offers advice on obtaining campaign finance databases from local and state officials who may be reluctant to hand them over. Warner also provides tips for cleaning the data before you analyze it.

IRE members can download the tipsheets from www.ire.org/resourcecenter. You can also order tipsheets from the IRE Resource Center at 573-882-3364 or rescntr@nicar.org.