More than 800 journalists, educators and students attended the 30th Annual IRE Conference, June 15-18 in Fort Worth, Texas.
The conference offered more than 130 panels and workshops on covering beats, writing, editing, producing and hands-on classes in data analysis.
About 300 people showed up for Thursday's optional CAR day, which included panels on issues as far-ranging as introducing newsroom intranets and diagnosing medical and care data.
The conference also featured two rooms exclusively geared towards CAR: a hands-on room teaching the basics of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and Access database manager, and a demo room where journalists showed off some of the newest and most advanced technology with presentations on CrimeStat, satellite imagery, Web scraping, social network analysis and more.
Federal Contracts Update
The IRE and NICAR Database Library recently updated its Federal Contracts database, making the latest additions available to journalists faster.
The database contains data about contracts between about 70 federal agencies and thousands of contractors. Those contractors include large corporations, local businesses, universities, nonprofits, and local, state and foreign governments. The database lists – among other things – the agency and office, the amount of money, date, contractor, purpose of the contract and where the work is performed.
Journalists can use the data to examine the local economic impact of a federal project. Combine it with campaign finance information to look into the relationships between the government awarding the contract and the contractor who earns the business.
Previously, the data was updated annually, but for the first time, the Database Library is making new data available as soon as the agency's contractor releases updates.