Last year the Houston Chronicle published watchdog stories about Child Protective Services unfairly taking children away from families; stories about how Texas is shortchanging students; and stories about a sexual abuse crisis in the Southern Baptist Convention, the second largest faith group in the United States behind the Catholic Church.

The list goes on. In fact, I went ahead and made a list of some of the Chronicle’s best stories in 2019. Because while lots of people still religiously read their local paper, it’s also depressingly easy to find people who don’t see the point.

The past decade has been tough on the newspaper industry. Reading habits have changed. Facebook offers a free and never-ending stream of (mis)information. Who needs an ink-stained relic from the coal age for news?

The thing is, that ink-stained relic still boasts the largest newsroom in its community. Nothing else in the media landscape even comes close. Metro newspapers still field a small army of reporters to dig up stories, editors to help keep them on track, photographers to capture compelling moments, graphic designers to make the complex easily understandable, data journalists to crunch numbers and build interactive online graphics, and web and page designers to invite readers along for the ride.

Newspapers have ample time and resources to tell you something new about the world. Sometimes these stories make the world a better place by exposing problems. Stories in the Houston Chronicle have helped protect children from sexual predators, held public officials accountable, and triggered legislative scrutiny.

I’m old enough to remember when reporters didn’t have to worry about the business side of the news business. We didn’t have to worry about telling people why it’s important to subscribe. We let our work speak for ourselves.

Times have changed.

Regional newspapers across the country are still diligently serving as watchdogs in their communities. The exercise of compiling these big stories drives home the point that there’s a lot of good stuff to read in your friendly neighborhood newspaper. The Detroit Free Press published an entire special section devoted to the impact of its journalism. It’s a great idea.

Before you point out one of the many examples out there of a newspaper falling short of its mission, let me save you some time. You’re right. Newspapers have many faults.

But even with many faults, newspapers are still worth reading.

Still skeptical? Check out some of my favorite investigative stories that ran in the Chronicle in 2019:

Abuse of Faith

Nearly two years ago, Chronicle reporter Robert Downen covered a lawsuit against former state Judge Paul Pressler, a prominent figure in the Southern Baptist Convention who had been accused in civil papers of sexual abuse. During the course of that reporting, Downen came across other cases of sexual abuse involving Baptist leaders. He started building a spreadsheet to keep track of all the cases he found. It grew steadily by the day.

Countless stories have been written about the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. But there had rarely been any big investigations of the Southern Baptist Convention, which has 47,000 churches across the United States.

Steve Riley, the Chronicle’s investigations editor at the time who is now executive editor, asked me and investigative reporter Lise Olsen to help Rob find out how often sexual abuse happens at Southern Baptist churches, and what’s being done to stop it.

Photo journalist Jon Shapley was often by our side wherever we traveled, shooting photos and videos. Our spreadsheet of Baptist offenders came to life with the help of data journalists Jordan Rubio and Matt Dempsey, who checked our work and built an online database that readers could use as a public resource. Steve kept pushing us forward with weekly meetings and marching orders.

The result, after months of reporting, was Abuse of Faith, a multipart series the Chronicle published with the San Antonio Express-News that revealed how hundreds of church ministers, employees and volunteers had sexually abused more than 700 people over the past 20 years. Most of the victims were children.

The response was staggering. National media outlets picked up the stories. Hundreds of readers contacted us, many with their own stories of abuse. Baptist leaders said they were “broken” by the findings and promised to protect the vulnerable. The series changed the conversation of the SBC’s annual meeting in Birmingham last year, where Baptist leaders urged pastors to take the issue seriously and to adopt measures to prevent abuse.

As tips and responses from readers poured in, the Chronicle continued to publish more stories. Sarah Smith, who covered sexual abuses in independent Baptist churches, joined the team and helped reveal how Southern Baptist missionaries have suffered few, if any, repercussions when they sexually abused people while serving abroad.

Russell Moore, president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, praised the newspapers’ investigation and said people with “functioning consciences” have been “filled with rage” by the findings.

“The idea that somehow this shouldn’t be out there in public is exactly the mentality that leads to these predators being able to carry out their actions,” Moore said.

Broken Trust

Less than a month after the Chronicle published Abuse of Faith, the paper unveiled the findings of yet another investigation that was a year in the making. Broken Trust, by Susan Carroll and David Hunn, untangled the complicated purse strings of the Texas Permanent School Fund, a $44 billion piggy bank for school children. Faced with a mind-numbing financial story, Susan and David clearly explained to readers what was wrong with the fund and why people should care:

It was a grand promise, one our forefathers made 165 years ago to all Texas children, to theirs and ours and those not yet born.

With $2 million and the state’s most abundant and precious resource — its land — they created the Texas Permanent School Fund to forever support public education. It was called a “sacred trust.”

That trust, dedicated to K-12 schools, is now valued at $44 billion, bigger than even Harvard University’s endowment.

It is also broken.

The Permanent School Fund has failed to match the performance of peer endowments, missing out on as much as $12 billion in growth and amassing a risky asset allocation, a yearlong Houston Chronicle investigation reveals.

Outside fund managers have charged the endowment at least a billion dollars in fees during the past decade, records show. Some of them have had professional or personal relationships with Texas School Land Board members, who govern a portion of the fund.

And, critically, the fund is sending less money to schools than it did decades ago, in real dollars. The amount dropped to an average of $986 million annually over the past decade from an average of $1.14 billion in the previous 20 years, in inflation-adjusted dollars. Last year, the fund distributed only 2.8 percent of its value — roughly half the share paid out by many endowments.

Do No Harm

Mike Hixenbaugh, a former Chronicle reporter who now works at NBC News, and Keri Blakinger, who was just hired by the Marshall Project, spent nine months investigating doctors who specialize in providing expert testimony in suspected cases of child abuse in Texas. The project started after Keri covered a case of Child Protective Services wrongfully taking children away from their parents. Keri and Mike started investigating.

Their series, Do No Harm, has raised concerns among Texas lawmakers:

Unbeknownst to many parents who encounter them, these pediatricians, now stationed at virtually every major children’s hospital in the country, work closely with child welfare agencies and law enforcement, providing expert reports and court testimony in thousands of cases a year and helping to shield untold numbers of abused children from additional harm.

But in their zeal to protect children, some child abuse pediatricians also have implicated parents who appear to have credible claims of innocence, leading to traumatic family separations and questionable criminal charges, an investigation by the Houston Chronicle and NBC News has found.

Even critics acknowledge that the doctors’ conclusions are likely correct most of the time, particularly in cases where children have suffered extensive unexplained injuries. But when the evidence is less clear, a diagnosis of child abuse can devastate families, often with long-term consequences.

Reporters for this series spent nine months examining more than 40 such cases in Texas, a state that provides $5 million in grants each year — including $2.5 million from the agency that oversees Child Protective Services — to support the work of these physicians, deputizing them to review cases on behalf of child welfare investigators. Reporters scrutinized thousands of pages of court transcripts, government contracts and medical records. They spoke with more than 75 attorneys and doctors, and interviewed two dozen current and former Child Protective Services employees and union officials.

The reporting reveals a legal and medical system that sometimes struggles to differentiate accidental injuries from abuse, particularly in cases involving children too young to describe what happened to them. Physicians intent on protecting the most vulnerable in some instances have overstated the reliability of their findings, using terms such as “100 percent” and “certain” to describe conclusions that usually cannot be proven with absolute confidence. Child welfare workers, overworked and untrained in complex medical issues, are not always sure how to proceed when the primary evidence against a caregiver comes in the form of a doctor’s note.

A botched drug raid

Sometimes a newspaper publishes the findings of an investigation on a rolling basis as it learns more and more new information. For nearly a year, the Chronicle has published dozens of stories trying to get to the truth behind a botched drug raid by the Houston Police Department that killed Rhogena Nicholas and Dennis Tuttle and injured five officers.

Related: How to contact an investigative journalist

A team of Chronicle reporters covered the shootout and the aftermath. St. John Barned-Smith and Keri Blakinger learned that an internal police investigation concluded that Officer Gerald Goines had lied about using a confidential informant to buy heroin at the home of Nicholas and Tuttle. Police chief Art Acevedo ordered an “extensive audit” of the 175-member narcotics division and an examination of Goines’ recent cases.

The Chronicle did its own digging:

HPD Chief Art Acevedo maintains the problems with the operation and deaths of Tuttle and Nicholas were the work of a pair of rogue officers.

“I don’t have any indication it’s a pattern and practice,” Acevedo said after the raid.

However, a Houston Chronicle review of police records reveals a fuller picture of misconduct by Goines and past problems in the narcotics division.

Officers filed false affidavits when they asked judges for search warrants or arrest warrants. They performed sloppy investigative work and misrepresented their use of confidential informants, according to disciplinary records and court documents.

The Chronicle’s review also raises questions about the oversight of the division. While experts say best practices call for officers to rotate out of units such as narcotics regularly, dozens of officers have spent 10 years or more in that division at HPD. HPD’s inspections division audited narcotics’ operations just once in the 20 years prior to the deadly Jan. 28 raid, according to information obtained through a public records request.

The Track

When government officials took the unusual step of suing prostitutes, pimps and johns who congregated on the Bissonnet Track, legal affairs reporter Gabrielle Banks and photographer Godofredo Vasquez took the unusual step of visiting “the Track” again and again over the course of eight months to put a human face to the problem.

“The first few visits to the neighborhood startled us both,” Gabby wrote about the project. “We’re both big city kids, we’ve both reported in an array of difficult settings, but the near-omnipresence of street hustling at night caught us by surprise.”

Here’s how she started her three-part story:

A dozen miles from downtown Houston, cars inch down an industrial side street and drivers idle by a cluster of young women bathed in streetlight, brokering primal transactions.

A middle-aged woman in stilettos and a tight-fitting shirt stretched down to her thighs crosses a feeder road on a weekday morning, flicking her tongue suggestively at commuters stopped at the light.

A few blocks away, tenants tell the building manager they’ve seen strangers having sex outside their doorways, in their complex’s laundry room and inside Range Rovers in the gated parking lot.

A kindergartner and first grader wonder aloud on their walk to school about the ladies standing around with their privates showing.

“They’re selling their body to feed their kids,” their mother says.

These scenes might raise eyebrows in sprawling suburbs and well-heeled city districts, but they are ordinary and unremarkable to shopkeepers and apartment dwellers in this urban patch on the southwest outskirts of the city. It’s known to prostitutes, cops and johns as the Bissonnet Track.

The neighborhood has earned an international reputation in recent decades for the street trafficking that permeates everyday life. Arrests have made barely a dent in the criminal activity.

Now, local officials have taken the radical step of asking a judge to declare several blocks off-limits to more than 80 people accused of engaging in prostitution — labeling them nuisances to the community and threatening fines if they return.

Denied Again

Three years ago, the Houston Chronicle revealed how Texas officials had arbitrarily denied thousands of school children access to special education services. The U.S. Department of Education ordered Texas to fix its broken system, saying the state was violating federal laws requiring schools to serve all students with disabilities.

Last year, education writer Shelby Webb and I teamed up with Laura Isensee at Houston Public Media to see how Texas has responded:

Years after Texas Education officials pledged to undo a decade worth of damage caused by a cap on special education services, the state remains in violation of federal disability laws.

School district administrators are still clamoring for guidance and funding.

And parents are still complaining that they’ve had to beg or threaten to sue in order to get their children evaluated for extra help in the classroom.

They say Texas students are being denied special education — again.

The Houston Chronicle revealed more than three years ago that the state had systematically denied tens of thousands of students special education services, triggering a federal investigation and a series of promised changes by the Texas Education Agency.

Although the state has made some progress, it has yet to deliver critical resources promised to parents and guidance overdue to districts, an investigation by the Chronicle and Houston Public Media shows.

“We have ruined a generation of kids,” said Sonja Kerr, an attorney who works on behalf of students with disabilities, “and we are about to ruin another generation with the inaction from TEA and the complete complacency.”

Covering the beat

Newspapers spend a lot of time and money on lengthy investigations. Those stories are important. But in between the big hits are stories from reporters who cover specific beats — things like City Hall and the transportation beat. If you spend any time reading the Chronicle, you can tell its beat reporters aren’t sitting around covering meetings, waiting to be spoon fed stories.

No reporter in Texas has done more to decipher the arcane billing practices of the health care industry than Jenny Deam. She’s saved customers hundreds of thousands of dollars by writing about their battles with insurance companies. Her last story of 2019 was about yet another firm — Companion Life Insurance — that reversed course and decided to pay for a patient’s mounting medical bills after Jenny wrote about the dispute.

It’s hard to pinpoint Keri Blakinger’s best story about the state’s criminal justice system. But last year, she witnessed the launch of a state-of-the art denture clinic for prison inmates. Oh yeah, Keri was the one who revealed how Texas prisons rarely provided dentures to inmates.

City Hall reporter Mike Morris’ latest story in 2019 revealed how no one is keeping track of who attends games and events at government-run suites at Minute Maid Park, Toyota Center and NRG Stadium. Mike’s covered the region’s sluggish disaster response to Hurricane Harvey. He helped analyze campaign contributions from city vendors to Mayor Sylvester Turner. And he teamed up with transportation reporter Dug Begley for this interesting, well-researched story about why Houston’s roads are in such terrible shape.

Zach Despart examined the unusual conflicts of interest between the district attorney’s office and its consultant, Amir Mireskandari, a Democratic booster with ties to poker clubs that were under criminal investigation. The cases were dropped when the conflicts came to light. Zach talked to just about everyone involved in the mess, including Mireskandari.

Alex Stuckey wrote enough stories in 2019 to fill a book about NASA’s mission to land on the moon. But the story that stood out to me was one I had never read before until she wrote it — the environmental impact of NASA’s rocket launches. Alex discovered there’s an astonishing lack of research about the problem.

Shelby Webb and Nick Powell wrote about the aftermath of the Sante Fe High School shooting, and how families of victims are still searching for answers to basic questions that Texas authorities refuse to provide. Were there red flags missed? Mistakes made? Who knows. Meanwhile, in Florida, officials have not only provided answers in the Parkland shooting, but there have been suspensions and firings. “The glaring differences in information and accountability for two similar mass shootings boil down to one factor: public records laws.” Shelby and Nick wrote.

Jacob Carpenter has continually mined the education beat for interesting stories. He recently obtained data from the Houston Independent School District to reveal how thousands of students have never checked out a library book. “The paltry checkout rates are indicative of HISD’s relatively low investment in library services, which has drawn criticism for more than a decade from librarians, literacy advocates and some district leaders,” Jacob wrote. He told me he got the story idea by “reading long ass reports that no one else is reading.”

In other words, doing the grunt work newspaper reporters do every day.

I can’t say what the Chronicle will look like in the next decade. But I think this relic will stay just as relevant as it was in the last decade.

The post Top investigative stories of 2019 show why newspapers are still worth reading appeared first on John Tedesco.

If you want to know what really makes journalists tick, hanging out at an Investigative Reporters and Editors conference will restore your faith in humanity.

The whole point of this year’s massive gathering of journalists in Orlando, Florida was about finding truth — how to dig up facts, how to double and triple check them, and how to make sure a complex story is right.

It’s insanely interesting, inspiring stuff.

These tools and techniques are useful for anyone who cares about doing their own research. And they help show just how much work good journalists put into news stories at a time when a depressing number of people mistakenly view the media as purveyors of “fake news.”

I typed up my notes from the most interesting sessions I attended and included a few pointers I’ve learned over the years:

Online privacy and security

Protecting your documents and sources from prying eyes entails more than installing a privacy app on your phone and calling it a day. It requires thinking about what kind of risks you face online and what you can do about it. It’s a process.

Here are some basic steps you can take to protect yourself online, courtesy of BBC researcher Paul Myers and Mike Tigas of ProPublica:

1. Use different passwords for all your online accounts. That way, if one account gets hacked, your other accounts are still safe. Use a password manager such as LastPass to keep track of everything. It works on phones and computers.
2. Use two-step authentication in case a hacker does figure out your password.
3. Encrypt your phone and computer hard drives in case you lose them or authorities try to access them. Veracrypt is a free, open-source option. Both Apple and Android phones offer encryption as well.
4. Use messaging services that rely on strong, end-to-end encryption that prevents anyone from reading your stuff — including the people providing the service. Some options:

Signal is a smart phone app that encrypts messages and files and creates very little metadata — digital bread crumbs that reveal telling details such as when you sent a message and who received it. As long as all parties in a conversation use Signal, secure their phones, and use the self-destruct option in the message settings, Signal is about as secure as it gets. It can also encrypt phone and video calls.

WhatsApp also offers encryption. It’s more popular, but it creates more metadata. It’s owned by Facebook and no one really knows what Facebook does with that information. However, more people use it and it might not arouse as much suspicion as Signal.

ProtonMail is a Gmail alternative that also provides end-to-end encryption. While Google can see your email and provide those messages to authorities, ProtonMail can’t. It does, however, create metadata that is not encrypted, so be aware of that. I list ProtonMail on my contact page to encourage sources to protect their communications. 

Slack is a cool app but it’s not encrypted, as Gawker sadly learned. Two Slack alternatives that offer encryption are Peerio and Keybase.

Jitsi Meet is a Skype alternative that encrypts video calls.

5. Google is an amazing search engine but it tracks all your searches, which could be used against you if you’re ever sued or authorities obtain your Google data. Search engines such as StartPage and DuckDuckGo don’t track your searches at all.
6. Spend some time configuring your browser in the settings menu to protect your privacy online. Blocking third-party cookies, for example, helps prevent websites such as Facebook from tracking you across the web. Automatically deleting cookies every time you close your browser clears out unwanted trackers.
7. Use a VPN — a Virtual Private Network prevents your Internet Service Provider, such as AT&T, from seeing what websites you visit. You have to find a trustworthy one, though — avoid freebees. Go with a reputable, fee-based service.
8. Anonymize yourself by using the Tor browser. Good for conducting research when you don’t want the website to know your IP address.
9. Be careful of cloud providers such as Google Drive and DropBox. They can read your files, which means authorities or litigants can read your files, too, if they provide those companies with a search warrant or subpoena. I’m trying out an app called Syncthing that stores files between your devices without relying on a potentially vulnerable middle man. So far I like it. When I record an interview on my phone, the file magically appears on my work laptop, my home computer and any other devices I sync with it. Same thing with other types of files.
10. Install browser plugins that protect your online activities. Some good options include:

Https Everywhere: Provides a secure connection between you and a website.

uBlock Origin: A well-regarded adblocker, useful for blocking malicious ads.

Cookie AutoDelete: Deletes cookies from a web page whenever you close that tab.

Canvas Defender: Guards against browser fingerprinting, which is a way to track your browsing habits without the use of cookies.

Be careful what you download. Many browser extensions claiming to protect you are actually out to get you. There’s a huge difference between uBlock Origin (good) and plain-old uBlock (bad). Even good extensions can change owners and suddenly get all spammy without you knowing.

Further reading:

Tipsheet by Paul Myers of the BBC:

Tipsheet by Mike Tigas, news app developer at ProPublica: https://bitly.com/ire18-security

Useful privacy websites:

www.privacytools.io

Social media research and verifying viral content

When a big news story blows up, you’ll have to wade through social media, viral content and fake profiles, trying to make sense of it all. Here are some pointers courtesy of Paul Myers of the BBC, research wizard Henk van Ess, and Craig Silverman, official debunker at BuzzFeed.

Useful browser extensions and websites to verify content:

Reverse image searches and video verifier: See where an image has been posted in the past to check its origins. This is possible with Google Image Search (click and drag a photo from your hard drive to the search page), TinEye browser extension, and InVid photo and video analyzer.

Make screen grabs of controversial content in case it gets taken down, and save videos and photos. Download Facebook videos: https://www.fbdown.net/. Download YouTube videos: www.youtubeconvert.cc. Mozilla Firefox has a handy screen grabber built into the browser (click on the three dots in the URL bar and click on “take a screenshot”).

Check if a picture was photoshopped: http://www.fourandsix.com/

Check who is sharing content with CrowdTangle, a free extension owned by Facebook. It shows the top sharers — and who might be trafficking in fake news.

Check when a photo was created and other hidden details with Exif Data: http://exif.regex.info/exif.cgi

Analyze Twitter profiles: https://foller.me/

Another way to analyze Twitter profiles: https://tweetbeaver.com/index.php

Analyze a Facebook profile or page: https://stalkscan.com/

Another way to analyze profiles on Facebook: https://inteltechniques.com/OSINT/facebook.html. Also has ways to check out Twitter and Instagram accounts: https://inteltechniques.com

Analyze a viral video on YouTube: https://citizenevidence.org/2014/07/01/youtube-dataviewer/

Guide: How to spot fake news online: https://africacheck.org/factsheets/guide-how-to-spot-fakes-and-hoaxes-online/

List of more useful sites:

How to find out who’s sharing content and possibly spreading fake news

Check out CrowdTangle, mentioned above. You can also Google the ID number of YouTube videos and Instagram photos to see who’s sharing that material:

Another way to type this search: In Google, type:

[Full link to YouTube video] -site:youtube.com

[Full link to Instagram photo] -site:instagram.com

This shows you sites outside YouTube or Instagram that linked to that material.

How to find facebook pages or profiles that got taken down after a major news event:

1. Find complete name of person you’re interested in.
2. Conduct a site search for that name on google (site:facebook.com person’s name) to find the URL of the deleted page.
3. Then go to archive.is, paste url of facebook page to see if there’s an archived version.
4. You can also do keyword searches on Archive.is. Awesome way to find content.

How to hack Facebook:

Sometimes Facebook is finicky about search terms and it doesn’t always give you what you’re looking for. What then?

The good news is, every Facebook page, place and profile has a unique ID number. Sometimes that number is in the URL of the web page. If it’s not there, you can find it by checking https://findmyfbid.com.

Once you get the numeric ID code, go hack Facebook.

Modifying the URL in your browser a certain way tells Facebook to conduct a search query. For example, typing https://www.facebook.com/search/984197758297116/likers shows all the people who like the San Antonio Express-News Facebook page.

The basic formula is:

www.facebook.com / search / Facebook ID number of your choice / likers.

Type those terms with no spaces in the URL bar of your browser. You have to be logged into Facebook for this technique to work.

You can get really creative with this technique. “Likers” is just one parameter in a search query you can use. There’s also:

/visitors: Shows people who have checked in at a place. Example: Visitors at the San Antonio Express-News: https://www.facebook.com/search/984197758297116/visitors

/photos-of: Shows photos referring to that ID number. Example: Photos of San Antonio Express-News: https://www.facebook.com/search/984197758297116/photos-of

/photos-in: Shows photos taken at a place: Example: Photos in San Antonio Express-News: https://www.facebook.com/search/984197758297116/photos-in

/stories-topic: Shows discussions mentioning the account tied to that ID number. Example: https://www.facebook.com/search/984197758297116//stories-topic

Check out more hacks here: http://researchclinic.net/facebook.html

You can also combine searches.

Let’s say you’re assigned a story about the Beatles and you’re looking for San Antonians to interview. Find the ID number of the Beatles’ official Facebook page, find the ID number of San Antonio, Texas, and you can write a query that shows you people living in San Antonio who like the Beatles.

San Antonio ID: 110297742331680 (I found this by typing “San Antonio, Texas” in Facebook, clicking on the first “place” result, and finding the ID number in the URL.

Official Beatles Page ID: 69116329538

Plug those numbers into this query, with no spaces:

www.facebook.com/ search / ID_number / likers / Place _ID_Number / residents / intersect

Like this:

Boom.

Again, the reason why this might be necessary is because if you type “Residents of San Antonio, Texas who like the Beatles,” sometimes the results don’t show a list of what you want. I tried typing “Residents of San Antonio, Texas who like Phil Hardberger Park” and it didn’t show a list of people. But it does show a list if you configure the URL correctly with the right ID numbers:

Here’s another more user-friendly resource to play around with some of Facebook’s graph searches: http://graph.tips/beta/

Further reading from Paul Myers, a researcher at the BBC:

http://researchclinic.net/facebook.html

http://researchclinic.net/investigative-tools.html

http://www.researchclinic.net/graph.html

http://researchclinic.net/facebooksecrets/index.html

Craig Silverman tipsheet:

How to quickly background people you plan to quote in a story

We quote strangers every day in the newspaper, often without taking the time to verify they are who they say they are. How many times have we covered a weekend story, interviewed a bunch of people, and assumed they had no skeletons in the closet that can come back to bite us?

Kate Howard of the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting wrote a feature story about a guy without knowing his criminal history, and it turned out his criminal history was extremely relevant. She only found out about it after the story ran and the victim called her.

Kate argues we should all be doing quick-and-dirty background checks on everyone we write about, no matter how innocuous the story, so we don’t get blindsided. We need to make sure we know more about the people we’re highlighting in the paper.

Here are some of her tips:

Google the hell out of everybody in different ways. Try variations of their names and scroll past the first page of search results. Same thing with social media — check them on Linkedin and Facebook for sure, make sure they are who they say they are.

Check newspaper archives, we might have written about them before.

Court records: Parties involved in local lawsuits in Bexar County are easily searchable at https://apps.bexar.org/dklitsearch/search.aspx. The search also covers criminal cases.

Professional licenses: If someone tells you he’s an engineer, you can confirm that by looking up engineering licenses online. The same goes for other licensed professions, such as real estate agents, doctors, nurses, etc.

Look out for fake names. If someone identifies himself as “Hugh Jass,” be suspicious.

Further reading:

Kate’s tipsheet:

tinyurl.com/IREbackgrounding

People finders and other cool web tools

Pipl and Spokeo were frequently mentioned at IRE as useful tools to find phone numbers and social media profiles.

Truecaller boasts a searchable database of billions of phone numbers. Truecaller snagged those numbers from people who downloaded its app and shared all their contacts. It’s a good way to find out the name behind a phone number, just be careful when you sign up for it. Try setting up a ghost email account so your personal info isn’t collected.

Skype is a great people finder. If you have an email it lets you find the right person, not copy cats. Same thing with Facebook — try searching for emails to find profiles.

GeoLocate search: Allows you to conduct radius searches in Google maps with multiple keywords. Can be useful if you need to figure out where a photograph was taken. You can do things things like, “Show me all bookstores in downtown San Antonio that are within 50 meters of a coffee shop.”

Sqoop: Set up customized searches for corporate and federal court records. Free for journalists.

Court Listener: Free, full-text searches of many federal court records. Created by the makers of the “RECAP” browser extension that alerts you to free court records.

iFOIA: Good resource by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press with input by media lawyers to walk you through the FOIA process.

OpenCorporates: Searchable, crowd-sourced documents of corporations:

Charity Navigator: Features financial evaluations of charities worth at least $1 million:

Focus on solutions, not just problems

Tina Rosenberg, co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network, offered some good reminders about the importance of looking for solutions to the problems we write about:

This technique strengthens our stories and prods officials to take action. Here’s an example from her tipsheet:

“The Cleveland Plain Dealer had done several major series on lead paint. They showed in convincing detail how the city was failing its children. But these series didn’t produce impact.

“What did bring major change was a 2015 solutions series: “Toxic Neglect.” The paper did a traditional investigation, looking at the lead problem, and the city’s failures, through the lens of race. But its real focus was the solutions component, showing how Rochester was doing a better job overall and how neighbors such as Grand Rapids and Akron had each solved pieces of the puzzle.

“Lead paint was seen as such an entrenched problem that city officials could dismiss “Cleveland is failing its children” as unavoidable. But “Cleveland is failing while its neighbors are succeeding” was a different message,one profoundly embarrassing to city and state officials.”

How to handle difficult stories

Investigative reporters Karen de Sá at the San Francisco Chronicle and T. Christian Miller at ProPublica gave some good advice about how to interview sources who suffered trauma and officials who fear exposure. The main message was to be transparent, be up front about where you’re going with a story, and give them every opportunity to respond.

This is usually helpful no matter what kind of story you’re working on. When I’m working on an unflattering story about someone this is what I usually do:

• Contact them as soon as feasible in the reporting process — not at the last minute before we go to press. In broad strokes, I tell them the gist of why I’m contacting them and the direction of my story, and I’d like to talk to them about it. I hope this starts a dialogue where I can continue to call them as I continue the reporting process and new questions arise.
• If they don’t respond I try to send them a message with the broad outlines of the story and my top questions. Sometimes this provokes a response. The main idea here is that no one should ever be blindsided by what they read in the paper, and you want to make sure you know about any disputed details.
• As soon as a story runs online, I send out a link to the main people in the article and ask if they have any feedback or questions and to please stay in touch for future stories. This tells them a) we care about being accurate and b) we’re not doing a hit-and-run piece.

Staying organized

Notes template: You can use the navigation pane in Word or Google Docs to create sections in your notes for interviews, questions, contacts, etc. This helps you avoid the chaos of disorganized notes. This is what I use:

Other useful tools to stay organized while reporting and writing a story are in this presentation by Sarah Hutchins of IRE and Taylor Blatchford of NICAR, bit.ly/IRE18-organization, and in helpful tips by Pulitzer Prize winner Leon Dash:

Evernote: Key feature is that Evernote lets you search everything — including text in images. It’s your vast, personal archive. Very handy on deadline when you’re trying to factcheck a factoid in a stack of documents. Two other apps mentioned at IRE that help with piles of documents are Everlaw and DEVONthink.

oTranscribe: An efficient way to transcribe your interviews. Everything happens in the browser so you don’t have to switch back and forth between your recording and your document.

Otter: Helpful transcription tool that’s free for the first 600 minutes every month. Click on a section of the transcript to hear that exact part of the recording. Not 100 percent accurate, but nothing is, and this helps you quickly find key sections of long interviews. Trint is a similar service that I’ve tried in the past and it’s been a lifesaver at times.

Note taking: Recommended by New York Times reporter Ellen Gabler, try creating a spreadsheet of all your telephone interviews. Columns can include the date, phone number of the source, topic of the story, and text of the interview. Sarah Hutchins recommends typing notes in Word and pasting them into your spreadsheet. All your interviews are in one place, and you can sort and filter by topic to find what you need quickly.

Document organizing: Another spreadsheet idea — create a spreadsheet of all the documents you gather.

Processing notes: Leon Dash said when he works on a project, he goes through all his interview transcripts, make notes of the key parts, then writes his book or story from those notes.

Scrivener: Popular writing tool that lets you organize sections of a story and see your notes as your write. Some writers swear by this app.

FOIA Machine: Provides contact info of FOIA officers automatically and offers boilerplate information for FOIA requests.

IFTTT: If This, Then That lets you create “applets” that join different services together.

For example, you can download all the tweets of a source you’re following on Twitter to a Google spreadsheet to make sure you never miss anything.

Best practices: Bookmark notebooks with post it notes, marking each interview. Lets you easily find them. On your computer, create digital filing cabinets for email and digital files. Create subfolders in similar ways on all your devices. Use dates in file names for computer documents, come up with a naming system. Avoid writing “finalfinal_final_draft2.” Write something like “Draft_JT_06252018”

Final thought: Don’t use all these tools all at once. Try each one out and give them a real chance to see if they work for you.

The post Insanely awesome journalism tips from IRE’s 2018 investigative reporting conference appeared first on John Tedesco.

In February 2009, an 8-year-old girl from Schertz died, alone, of acute appendicitis — a disease that could have easily been treated if caught in time.

In the hours leading up to her death, people concerned about the girl — including officers from the Schertz Police Department — had warned the Texas Department of Child Protective Services that she was a victim of neglect.

CPS didn’t act. And on Feb. 5, 2009, authorities found the girl’s body in a soiled bed.

Her name was Sarah Brasse.

It wasn’t so long ago in Texas that you would have had a tough time learning any of those tragic details.

In fact, according to the state officials in charge of protecting children from abusive adults, you would have had no legal right to even know Brasse’s name.

And you certainly wouldn’t be able to know the agency missed opportunities to help Brasse.

But a decade of diligent reporting by three Express-News journalists shined a spotlight of transparency on tragedies involving Brasse and scores of other children in San Antonio, helping the public understand the unfathomable.

In Brasse’s case, a state watchdog is now investigating how CPS could have done a better job protecting her. But that investigation probably wouldn’t have happened without the work of Express-News Writer Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje, who obtained internal CPS documents about the case that gave readers a rare look inside a troubled state agency that failed to act, despite repeated warnings about Brasse’s welfare.

“The lack of agency action just really stunned me,” Melissa told me.

Focusing on a hidden problem

Any longtime reader of the paper knows that Melissa’s stories were the latest in a series of articles that have unfolded in the pages of the Express-News over the years about the failures and challenges at CPS.

It’s worth revisiting these powerful stories, all of which took months of difficult work about a topic people don’t like to read. The projects that stand out were written by three journalists — Melissa, Cathy Frye and Nancy Martinez Preyor-Johnson. I sit next to Melissa in the newsroom, and I’m Facebook pals with Cathy and Nancy, who now work elsewhere, so I asked them how they wrote these outstanding pieces of journalism that grabbed readers and didn’t let go.

In 2004, the Express-News published a series of stories by reporter Cathy Frye about Unit 39, a group of overwhelmed CPS caseworkers in San Antonio.

The first story began this way:

Courtney Mayfield grabs two chunks of her ash-blond hair, lowers her head over her cluttered desk and groans.

This isn’t a good week. December is rapidly approaching, and she’s still searching for a crackhead mom on the run with a toddler.

Tracking a homeless woman who’s roaming the streets with two sick kids in tow. Listening to the pleas of a 16-year-old girl who doesn’t want to go to a children’s shelter.

Then there’s the deadline, that impossible deadline. In two weeks, the Child Protective Services caseworker is supposed to have 70 percent of her investigations closed. She’ll never make it, not with 90 open cases stacked across her desk and the floor of her office.

And if she doesn’t? Banish the thought. The stakes are high, the pressure immense. In the next office, a young colleague of Courtney’s with 120 cases to work and a rising sense of futility phones her roommate and cries.

How did Cathy know all that? Because she was there. She spent months tagging along with CPS caseworkers, having been granted unusual access to the secretive agency.

“The way the system is set up, it’s very difficult to get in and make these people real to your readers,” said Cathy, who now works at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Shrouded in regulations protecting the confidentiality of child-abuse investigations, the agency usually didn’t welcome outsiders. But a spike in child deaths that year prompted a public outcry — and created a unique situation for Cathy to get an insider’s perspective at the agency.

“They were under a lot of heat,” recalled Cathy. “Basically, I was the least of their problems.”

Related: How to contact an investigative reporter

Cathy packed her stories with telling details that she witnessed firsthand. The only way to do that is spending lots of time with people until they eventually start acting like themselves:

Courtney waits outside a dingy white duplex with pale blue trim. A sour smell wafts from a front window, which is partially covered by a grimy sheet.

“Can I come inside yet?” she calls, just as a hugely pregnant woman walks out, holding a toddler’s hand. The woman nods, a wide, anxious smile creasing her round face.

“It’s not that clean,” she apologizes, opening the door. “I’m pregnant. I get really tired.”

The home boasts only a tiny kitchen, living area and a single bedroom. Furniture is scarce. The bedroom contains a bunk bed that sleeps three and a stained, twin-size mattress propped against a wall.

Courtney inspects the rest of the home. Refrigerator contains food. Lights work. Plumbing works. No apparent roach infestation. Then she asks the woman to demonstrate how her son’s asthma treatment machine works. As the frazzled mother tries to assemble the contraption, it becomes quite clear to Courtney that she’s winging it.

Courtney asks about the new baby, due to arrive in December. “Do you have a crib? Do you need things?”

Courtney heads back to her car. She can see that this woman functions at a lower mental level.

“Really, I need to get a better feel for what she’s understanding and not understanding, ” Courtney says. This may be a case of medical neglect. Or it may be the woman simply needs someone to help her manage her son’s condition.

Yes, the whole family sleeps in one bedroom, but that’s not neglectful, Courtney says. And yes, they are poor, but that’s not neglectful either. They appear to be doing what they can with what they have.

“It’s got to be really, really bad before I say they have to change,” Courtney says. “You have to pick your battles. Is it more important to fight with mom because there are a few roaches in the kitchen or is it more important to fight with her to keep her boyfriend away?”

“The little details are always the most telling things,” Cathy said about how she crafts an interesting narrative. “A lot of the time, that requires spending more time with people.”

As Cathy shadowed caseworkers, she went with them during their interviews with parents accused of abuse or neglect. They went to their houses. And to Cathy’s surprise, most parents didn’t object to her presence. That included a mother accused of beating her teen-age daughter with a meat tenderizer, leaving square-shaped wounds.

“There was a lot of shame,” Cathy said. “The meat-tenderizer mom, when she came in, it was almost like she felt like she deserved to be not only punished, but shamed for that in some weird way. She let me in for the entire interview. She was very candid.”

Rare access at Child Protective Services

That kind of access to the inner workings of CPS and the cases it handles is extremely rare, as Nancy’s stories a few years later in 2007 demonstrated. At the time, CPS was refusing to release anything beyond bare-bone statistics about the children who died in Bexar County. The agency refused to even release the names of victims.

“I really want to tell the stories behind the numbers,” Nancy said, echoing the same goals Cathy had for her stories about Unit 39. Nancy spent six months tracking down sources — police reports, autopsy reports, tipsters — to flesh out the details behind each child death.

“It was very, very difficult,” said Nancy, who is now a teacher. “It was begging sources to help out with information.”

On July 15, 2007, the Express-News published the first article of Nancy’s project. The series was called Four Feet Under … the usual depth of a child’s grave.

It began this way:

The state of Texas doesn’t want you to know about Ruben Reyna.

You should not know he was beaten to death with blows to the head or who is suspected of killing him.

You should not know that Child Protective Services had investigated his family on two earlier allegations of abuse involving Ruben.

You should not know if Ruben lived or died next door to you.

You should not even know the boy’s name. State law says so. That information is confidential.

One CPS official says the law is necessary. “It’s an important law, not meant to protect the reputation of our agency, rather to protect the citizens of Texas, ” said Sherry Gomez, CPS San Antonio region director. But critics say the lack of transparency prevents the sort of public scrutiny that has helped bring about meaningful reform elsewhere.

“The way you protect children’s rights is by exposing the system to scrutiny so it can be made better, said Richard Wexler, executive director for the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Virginia. “The child is dead, so there is no issue of invasion of privacy. There won’t be real accountability until the system is completely open to scrutiny so that we can see all the mistakes they make and when they get it right or when a tragedy is not their fault.”

The series revealed shortcomings in state law that state Sen. Carlos Uresti, D-San Antonio, had been trying to change.

“He was personally motivated by the article and even had it framed,” Uresti’s former communications director, Mark Langford, wrote in an email after I asked him about the impact of the stories.

In 2009, Uresti’s Senate Bill 1050 required CPS to release basic details about children who died from abuse or neglect. Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed the bill into law. Melissa told me that CPS officials describe it as “The Express-News law.”

“It’s impossible to say how widely read the series was outside of San Antonio, but he definitely believes it influenced the Bexar delegation and local child advocates who supported the effort, came to Austin to testify for SB 1050 and other legislation, and lobby each day on behalf of children,” Langford wrote. “So … job well done Express-News.”

But even after passage of the bill, it’s still difficult for outsiders to learn about mistakes at CPS and whether officials are being held accountable. The fatality reports don’t go into that kind of detail.

“The average person can’t read that and say, ‘Oh, OK, this is what they should have done and they didn’t,'” Melissa said.

Few details released in child deaths

That’s what her stories about Brasse accomplished. Melissa obtained internal documents that showed, for example, how CPS took no action when Brasse’s parents didn’t provide medical care and health insurance for their children, despite being told to do so by CPS.

The records described an agency that seemed cowed by Brasse’s father, who threatened to sue. The day before Brasse died, people warned CPS that the mistreatment was escalating. Yet CPS failed to send a caseworker who could have seen she was in “imminent danger.”

“When later pushed to explain what happened to Sarah, CPS decided to police itself. Three employees conducted an in-house review, thus avoiding outside scrutiny,” Melissa wrote in her story.

Many of these problems sound familiar — Cathy and Nancy’s past stories struck the same troubling chords. As powerful as these stories are, did they make a difference?

For the reporters who wrote these articles, the impact on government bureaucracies and intractable societal problems is hard to measure. But that doesn’t mean these stories about children dying at the hands of adults aren’t worth telling. And it doesn’t mean readers don’t care, especially if the stories are written with telling details.

“I don’t think you can give up on them,” Cathy said of the victims. “At some point I still believe there are lot of people in the background — defense attorneys, caseworkers — who know that being more transparent is beneficial.”

“A miracle is not going to happen,” said Nancy, who suffered nightmares after reading document after document about dead children. “I don’t think it will ever change.” But newspapers can’t ignore child abuse, and Nancy said she was overwhelmed by the reader response to her stories.

“I saw readers were really, really responding,” she said. “They were responding with letters, emails, phone calls.”

It’s good to hear this kind of talk in the Buzzfeed age of cat GIFs and viral videos. Dark but important topics don’t usually attract page views. So reporters have to figure out a way to make these stories matter to people.

“I will never forget that story,” Nancy said.

Hopefully, neither will the people who read it.

The post Telling stories about the unthinkable: How three journalists shined a spotlight on child abuse appeared first on John Tedesco.

San Antonio lawyer Al Acevedo Jr, center right, pleads guilty of bribing a state district judge. @mySA pic.twitter.com/6pLLkkQQcw

— Jerry Lara (@fotografolara) March 17, 2014

“In exchange for these bribes, Judge McGinty provided favorable judicial rulings which benefited me and my clients,” Acevedo says in the court document. “Judge McGinty provided these favorable judicial rulings as requested, and as opportunities arose. These favorable rulings included leniency at sentencing and less restrictive conditions of release.”

Related: Have you been asked to donate to Shop with a Sheriff? Call me.

The clients included a man who was convicted of DWI and sentenced by McGinty to three years imprisonment. In court, McGinty had said the defendant had committed so many offenses it didn’t make any sense to put him on probation. Yet after Acevedo asked him to reduce the sentence, the judge did just that and sentenced him to four years community supervision:

On Sept. 10, Gabriel A. Lopez stood before then-state District Judge Angus McGinty and received three years in prison and a $1,500 fine for his no-contest plea to drunken driving.

He admitted his blood alcohol level was 0.21 — more than 21/2 times the legal limit. It was his third driving-while-intoxicated conviction.

“There comes a time when someone has committed so many offenses that it doesn’t make sense to put them on probation,” McGinty told Lopez, 35, who appeared with attorney Leandro Renaud.

The judge noted Lopez had 11 prior criminal cases and had received probation four times, while three of those were revoked.

“That’s unacceptable, Mr. Lopez,” McGinty admonished. “I do not think probation is appropriate.”

But just three days later, on Sept. 13, Lopez stood before McGinty again, this time with lawyer Al Acevedo Jr. And this time, he walked out a happier man after the judge changed Lopez’s sentence to four years of probation.

“Mr. Lopez, when you were here last, and I sentenced you, it’s because I thought you had earned the right to go to” prison, McGinty said. “Your attorney has done a good job of pointing out some facts that I didn’t adequately consider before.”

In reality, the FBI has alleged, Acevedo had the good graces of the judge because he had served as McGinty’s personal car service — paying for repairs on the jurist’s two luxury cars with the expectation that the scales of justice would tilt heavily in favor of Acevedo’s clients.

Later, Acevedo’s law partner congratulated Acevedo. “I guess it does make a difference givin’, givin’ people money, right?”

Acevedo laughed. “Sure does,” he replied.

Other clients that benefited from the judge’s leniency included an alleged bank robber and a man charged with aggravated robbery.

McGinty resigned after word of the federal investigation spread but hasn’t yet been charged.

The post San Antonio lawyer Alberto Acevedo says he bribed judge, got favorable treatment appeared first on John Tedesco.

Check out some of my favorite research tips, strategies and resources from this year’s Investigative Reporters and Editors conference, where about 1,100 incredibly talented journalists are meeting in San Antonio. These conferences are geared for journalists, but really anyone who’s interested in research tools will find many of these tips handy.

Jul 1, 2013: 8:32 am

More awesome search tips from Google expert Daniel Russell, with real-world examples.

Jun 24, 2013: 12:07 pm

Creative ways to find sources:

Perhaps the best tip sheet at #IRE13 – http://t.co/gY0bLhOqKj on building sources from @mattapuzzo

— Nick Penzenstadler (@npenzenstadler) June 22, 2013

Jun 24, 2013: 10:27 am

How to find America’s worst charities: Excellent tips by Kendall Taggart at the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Jun 24, 2013: 7:40 am

Tips and tweets:

Compliments to @IRE_NICAR staff, led by @markhorvit for a great conference. Leaving San Antonio totally jazzed #IRE2013 #IRE13

— Mark Katches (@markkatches) June 23, 2013

SearchReSearch: TipSheet for IRE 2013 ( #IRE13 ) http://t.co/So9pCxVDTm great resource for maximizing your Google search capabilities

— Kenneth Olson (@ken_v_olson) June 23, 2013

MT @gijn: Getting past NO when govt pushes back. Presentation by David Jackson (Chicago Tribune) #transparency http://t.co/UtZKsd5BCS #IRE13

— Melissa Nann Burke (@nannburke) June 23, 2013

New blog post | "Beyond the written word – visual data in journalism – presentation and links from #IRE13 http://t.co/OOsFQix6Ht

— Ben Jones (@DataRemixed) June 23, 2013

Retention schedules kept on Web sites are like a "menu of documents" at an agency or government. (@jaimidowdell, #ire13)

— Becky Yerak (@beckyyerak) June 23, 2013

.@SunFoundation's @bill_allison and Jacob Fenton demonstrating great tools to follow influence in government: http://t.co/X7rcMiBK09 #ire13

— Joe Yerardi (@JoeYerardi) June 22, 2013

Jun 23, 2013: 1:22 pm

Investigating the wealthy sounds like a daunting task, but there’s actually a vast amount of historical resources available to the reporter who wants to try.

Investigative reporter Lise Olsen of the Houston Chronicle once visited a probate court clerk’s office to check out a tip that lawyers were making themselves rich at the expense of the estate of a wealthy but incapacited man. The clerk asked how many boxes she wanted to get in the case — there were 30.

In other words, probate courts are a gold mine. Olsen suggested looking at fee schedules and reports filed by court-appointed guardians.

It helps that wealthy Texans are chatty and often more approachable than their East and West-coast counterparts, said Mimi Swartz, an executive editor at Texas Monthly. In many cases, the only people who crave more attention than rich Texans are their lawyers. You can learn a lot about how the real world works by simply listening to their stories.

“One way to pay kickbacks to judges is to play poker and lose,” Swartz said.

Ancestry.com can help you find genealogical records. For a modest fee, you can find an actual picture of the ship that ferried specific European immigrants across the Atlantic.

A curious mind can always lead you to a good story. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Bill Dedman stumbled across the unusual case of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark while he was house hunting and checked the most expensive mansions that were for sale. It launched him on a story that started out as a feature about Clark, whose father was a wealthy copper-mine baron and disgraced lawmaker. But the story morphed into an investigation of Clark’s current whereabouts — she hadn’t lived in any of her mansions for years, and Dedman’s reporting raised questions about the people overseeing her vast fortune.

The bizarre tale struck a chord with readers. It went viral and Dedman ended up writing a book about it called “Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune.”

Dedman relied on cemetery records, depositions in court cases and old newspaper clippings. He obtained pictures of Clark’s estates and the artwork she painted. He wanted to do a good job describing them, so he talked to experts.

Botanical consultants told him precisely what kind of unique plants were on the estate grounds.

A professor of fashion history described the kind of apparel Clark wore as a young woman.

An art expert told Dedman that in the old days, women usually painted with pastels. Oil painting was considered a manly art form. Yet Clark chose to be an oil painter. It showed an intriguing snippet of her character — which Dedman would not have discovered if he hadn’t gone to the trouble of talking to a knowledgeable expert.

Jun 22, 2013: 7:57 pm

Tips on Twitter:

Not able to be at #ire13? Check out tipsheets http://t.co/nQEbHouZCR More will be added.

— Jaimi Dowdell (@JaimiDowdell) June 22, 2013

If you want my slides on tracking government contracting, you can view them here: http://t.co/zj1oG2WVCM #IRE13

— Danielle Ivory (@danielle_ivory) June 22, 2013

From the #IRE13 session on investigating the oil and gas industry, here's a link to a fracking chemical database: http://t.co/dx8Pca83YJ

— Cezary Podkul (@Cezary) June 22, 2013

There are nine exemptions in FOIA. The 10th one they don't tell you about. It's "We don't want to give it to you." @wcochran #ire13

— Cherrill Crosby (@cherrill_crosby) June 22, 2013

Tipsheet from our #IRE13 panel about how to win open-records battles with uncooperative agencies: http://t.co/LgHp6aiph2

— John Tedesco (@John_Tedesco) June 23, 2013

Investigating trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border: http://t.co/OkiN0l7yGU #IRE13

— IRE and NICAR (@IRE_NICAR) June 22, 2013

Take a look at @writerbarton's groundbreaking story about a man's death in police custody http://t.co/X10inL9szw #IRE13

— Lauren Gilger (@laurengilger) June 22, 2013

Yes! The link from the "Search Rodeo" session at #IRE13 is now live, compliments of @BarbGray – check it out here: http://t.co/IH25yQCBOP

— Cezary Podkul (@Cezary) June 22, 2013

Download a PDF of my "Digging Deeper with Social Media" talk at #IRE13 | links, examples, tools | http://t.co/S1SqcfABfa #kipcamp

— DougHaddix (@DougHaddix) June 22, 2013

Slides from my #IRE13 demo of @TabulaPDF: https://t.co/Mf4OCREjq4

— mike tigas (@mtigas) June 22, 2013

https://twitter.com/sgoldstein/status/348548832109416448

Jun 21, 2013: 4:35 pm

Tips on Twitter:

Stalking a billionaire with a boat? NPR's Margot Williams: http://t.co/vf2IFVpfcl #IRE2013 #IRE13 pic.twitter.com/k4CfiW3qmv

— Amy Pyle (@amy_pyle) June 21, 2013

New text searchable database of IRS 990 nonprofit forms from past 10 years via @LukeRosiak http://t.co/qAj4sBSViT #IRE13 #kipcamp

— DougHaddix (@DougHaddix) June 21, 2013

Getting skeptical sources to talk: "Sometimes people are more afraid of looking dumb than giving away sensitive information". So true #IRE13

— Aisha Dow (@aishamae) June 21, 2013

Enterprise on the ed beat handout here. #ire13 http://t.co/0i9GQRm7JX

— Mc Nelly Torres (@WatchdogDiva) June 21, 2013

#IRE13 Center for Investigative Reporting offers lots of reporters tools http://t.co/ClEWp47NCZ

— Bennett Loudon (@BennettLoudon) June 21, 2013

.@DavidBarstow: You need to spend a lot of time w the documents, reading everything and "marinate yourself in the information" #ire13

— Kelsey Ryan (@kelsey_ryan) June 21, 2013

Whatever you can't wait to tell a friend, don't leave it out of the story: advice from Jerry Mitchell, journalist. #IRE13 #GannettConnects

— Britt Kennerly (@bybrittkennerly) June 21, 2013

Jun 21, 2013: 4:11 pm

Check out interesting panels you missed at the IRE conference by reading the IRE Conference blog and Gannett’s IRE 2013 tumblr. Armies of reporters and journalism students are posting good stuff, including:

Delving into crime data and finding flaws

Transparency: Getting past “No”

Tips for environmental investigations

Jun 21, 2013: 11:40 am

Tips on Twitter about investigating charities:

https://twitter.com/melcrowe/status/348116910254198785

Investigating #nonprofits tip sheet #ire13 https://t.co/O9oWxFTz1j

— Kelsey Ryan (@kelsey_ryan) June 21, 2013

#IRE13: @CIRonline database of 8000 state regulatory actions against charities & solicitors: http://t.co/OjdYiUHgKo #IRE2013

— Douglas Lucas (@DouglasLucas) June 21, 2013

Jun 21, 2013: 11:23 am

So much information at IRE conferences is about how and where to find documents and information. It’s always interesting to hear what you should do after you amass that giant mountain of data and documents.

During yesterday’s Business Investigations panel, Reporter David Heath of the Center for Public Integrity talked about “the magic of simply sorting by date” when you take all your documents from a variety of sources and plug the information into a spreadsheet to make a timeline.

“It’s a very simple process,” Heath said. “It sounds too basic to talk about.” Heath includes everything he finds in the timeline early on in the reporting process because at first you don’t know what’s important. As the chronology grows, patterns, connections and narratives begin to emerge.

While investigating a shady company, Heath found a corporate filing signed by a man who claimed to lead the firm. But during that same time period, the same person also signed a different document in which he claimed to have nothing to do with the company. Heath later learned one of the government disclosures had been forged.

“Timelines are essential,” Heath said.

Other interesting tidbits at the panel:

Not many people know about LinkedIn’s advanced search page, which can help you find current and former employees of companies.

Journalists can get LinkedIn premium accounts for free, which allows you to email people on LinkedIn without being in their network. Very handy for finding sources.

Annual reports filed by companies with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission can be daunting. But be sure to check out sections titled “risk factors” and “legal proceedings.” These are where companies are usually at their most honest. They lay out things that could go wrong and major litigation. For companies that are very skilled at polishing their image, these sections help you find “chinks in their armor,” Heath said.

Jun 20, 2013: 3:31 pm

Best #IRE13 tweets so far:

#IRE13 slides from "Compared to What…" with @JsavageCaller available here http://t.co/BXnmfQ8IqE Hit us up if you have questions.

— Coulter Jones (@coulterjones) June 20, 2013

If you missed our kickoff session for #IRE13, all the resources are here: http://t.co/UHQvlptmv2 #BizJ

— Reynolds Center (@BizJournalism) June 20, 2013

If, like me, you missed the session on cheap data wrangling tools, get the presentation and tip sheet here: http://t.co/jwJ0g3EbjA #IRE13

— Tyler Dukes (@mtdukes) June 20, 2013

Here's Google Drive link to spreadsheet of tipsheet from this am's session #IRE13 Apps Reporters Can Use.xlsx – https://t.co/FDNJcdv7vl

— Stephen Stock (@StephenStockTV) June 20, 2013

We're happy to announce free Tableau Desktop for journalists: http://t.co/qcA82sT6M3 @tableau #IRE13

— Ellie Fields (@eleanorpd) June 20, 2013

How #IRE13 comes together, in pictures. http://t.co/b7Rd5hXwli

— IRE and NICAR (@IRE_NICAR) June 20, 2013

My hotel at #IRE13 welcomes guests by explaining why things could get punch-drunk crazy after the Spurs game. pic.twitter.com/s4bC13QOVx

— Ben Giles (@ben_giles) June 20, 2013

Jun 20, 2013: 2:55 pm

Even before the 2013 IRE Conference officially started, the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism hosted a free seminar Wednesday about finding interesting news stories in seemingly dry economic data.

One cool thing about this panel was how they showcased actual news stories, then worked backwards and revealed how the kernel of the story idea was found in the data.

For this article about the Eagle Ford Shale boom that ran in the San Antonio Express-News, the reporters did the following:

• Visited the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis website;
• Clicked on the “interactive” tab;
• Sifted through a series of menus that took them down to the county level;
• Checked how much per-capita personal income had increased in the Eagle Ford Shale counties. Once you get the data you can look at it in a variety of formats, such as tables or charts:

This story and other articles used as examples all relied on economic data — but the stories were also filled with the voices of real people to bring those numbers to life.

All the resources and presentations discussed in the seminar are available here.

Jun 20, 2013: 2:50 pm

Naturally, the 2013 IRE Conference is on Guidebook. You can check the conference schedule on your phone, save the events you want to attend and get reminders. I also like how you can view a map of the hotel, read about the speakers and check the #IRE13 feeds on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Yet another cool resource I learned from IRE.

Jun 29, 2012: 2:13 pm

Missed a panel at the IRE 2012 Conference in Boston? Tipsheets for members are available at IRE’s website. Yet another reason to join IRE.

Next year’s conference is in San Antonio, and we’re already talking about upcoming panels, speakers and events. Contact me if you have any ideas.

Thanks for a great time in Boston and hope to see you next year.

Jun 22, 2012: 10:39 am

How to attract an online audience for your investigation: http://t.co/beSA1th5 Awesome tips by @jessicaplautz from #IRE12

— ICIJ (@ICIJorg) June 21, 2012

Jun 21, 2012: 7:53 am

How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques.

Jun 17, 2012: 9:09 pm

Tips on Twitter (via Katie Foody’s awesome Storify collection of tips from the IRE conference):

Need help cleaning up data? Mr. Data Converter, Mr. People, Google Refine. #IRE12 #irefree

— Lindsey Rogers Cook (@Lindzcook) June 14, 2012

The walkthrough of my Refine class, with sample data & slides. Arm yourself for the monkey apocalypse: http://t.co/GuCsIkEO #IRE12

— Tom Meagher (@ultracasual) June 15, 2012

Mapping & location-based data a big untapped resource for journalists. Guardian tutorial on Google Fusion: http://t.co/RIuCrpyW. #IRE2012

— Bill Mitchell (@bmitch) June 16, 2012

So many great Web tools coming out of Sunday #IRE12 session. Try www [dot] cometdocs [dot] com to convert PDF data to Excel. So cool.

— Lindsay VanHulle (@LindsayVanHulle) June 17, 2012

This. RT @willcarless: Great tip: use http://t.co/Fote8Hch to search for photos and see if they are fake #IRE12

— Tyler Dukes (@mtdukes) June 16, 2012

Gem of “Tracking Private Parts of Public Officials” Gov’t firewalls that log outbound web requests. Where are your officials surfing? #IRE12

— Saul Tannenbaum (@stannenb) June 16, 2012

Jun 17, 2012: 5:08 am

Fellow #ire12 conference goers. Try the app camscaner to scan and make PDF documents with your smartphone. Best app EVER.

— jeremyjojola (@jeremyjojola) June 17, 2012

Jun 16, 2012: 9:25 pm

https://twitter.com/willhuntsberry/status/214163754848485376/

Jun 16, 2012: 4:23 pm

One “downside” about IRE conferences is you wind up amassing more great ideas and tipsheets than you know what to do with. How do you keep track of everything, and not forget an insight that might be useful months from now?

You might want to create your own tip sheet, or handbook, that you can use throughout your journalism career.

Use Google Docs, Word, a spreadsheet, or whatever format that’s easiest for you.

Organize it by topic, such as “People Finders” or “Campaign Finance.”

Under each topic, link to useful websites, and plug in your notes of the insights you learned at the conference.

My handbook is old and needs to be pruned. But you can see how it works. If I want to do a thorough job backgrounding someone, I go to the “Backgrounding” section of my handbook and start going down the list of things to check — licensing files, marriage licenses, etc.

Any time you come across a resource you think might come in handy, add it to your handbook. You might need it tomorrow — or a year from now.

Jun 16, 2012: 3:38 pm

Full link for #IRE12 #IRE2012 presentations on social media and backgrounding: http://t.co/T72BIbcc

— DougHaddix (@DougHaddix) June 16, 2012

Jun 16, 2012: 1:28 pm

Panel videos: IRE is posting videos of some panels at its latakoo page. Panels include tips for investigating businesses and a conversation about the state of the media after the News Corp. phone hacking scandal.

Jun 16, 2012: 9:16 am

Archives and historical documents can be powerful tools for journalists, even on deadline.

“It’s been my secret weapon,” said James Neff, investigations editor at the Seattle Times.

Some cool resources:

Sanborn fire insurance maps: These old maps offer rich historical details about buildings and neighborhoods. “They were like Google Streetview back in the day,” said Alison Young of USA Today, who relied on the maps for her project, “Ghost Factories.”

Regional collections of the maps are often available at local libraries, historical societies and universities.

Online Public Archives: A sweeping search of presidential archives and other holdings of the U.S. National Archives. “This is what I would consider one of the top tools,” Neff said.

Finding guides: Used to find pertinent material, finding guides are sometimes posted online, or archives will send them to you. Check out WorldCat, a library catalogue that includes 50,000 finding guides. “It’s the largest online library catalogue in the world,” Neff said.

Jun 16, 2012: 7:20 am

Check out the story behind the story of Craig Harris’ investigation of Arizona pension funds. Great stuff.

Jun 15, 2012: 4:46 pm

Resources used by Duff Wilson of Reuters for his investigation of the food industry and its lobbying against stricter health standards for children.

Influence Explorer: An overview of campaign finance, lobbying, earmark, contractor misconduct and federal spending data.

Open Secrets: Campaign-finance data broken down by industry.

National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Federal Election Commission: For contributions at the federal level.

Secretary of the Senate: For lobbying reports.

Jun 15, 2012: 11:44 am

Tips from Sara Ganim, reporter for the Patriot-News, who broke the Jerry Sandusky scandal:

When looking for a job ask: “What kind of journalists are you going to be working for?” Is this a newsroom that will allow you to spend a lot of time on investigative stories? When the Patriot-News hired her, Ganim’s bosses recognized they had a big story on their hands, cut her loose from her beat duties, and encouraged her to do what she had to do.
“You wouldn’t find that in every newsroom,” Ganim said.

Social media was NO help at first for the Sandusky story. Ganim had to rely on the old-school methods of knocking on doors. But when Sandusky was arrested, the newspaper “did a 180” and started using Twitter all the time.

“Twitter is a really great way to stay in touch with your readers,” Ganim said. At Joe Paterno’s public memorial service, people on Twitter were asking her questions, guiding her to things to look for. “I found it incredibly helpful,” she said. “It’s a good gauge of what your readers want to know.”

Try to give readers what no one else is giving them. When the news about the sexual assault charges broke, “AP was kicking our butt. They were getting all this great information, what Penn State was doing. My boss was freaking out.”

Ganim didn’t want to rehash what the Associated Press was reporting — she argued with her boss that they needed to go back to their sources, the parents of the victims, to get their reaction. No one else could do that.

“That’s really how we were able to stay ahead,” Ganim said.

Jun 15, 2012: 11:09 am

Investigating Power: A vast video archive of interviews with investigative journalists — several of whom are speaking right now at the IRE Conference.

Jun 15, 2012: 10:18 am

Tips on Twitter:

Ira Rosen of 60 Minutes: “Dead space is your friend. You ask a question and you let it lay there and people fill up that dead space.” #IRE12

— Taylor Dobbs (@taylordobbs) June 15, 2012

Pulitzer winner James Grimaldi: "Showing the quid is easy. The quo is easy. It's the pro that's tough. How did connection happen?" #IRE12

— John Russell (@JohnRussell99) June 15, 2012

Don't settle for interviews with PR people. Insist on talking to the real source. The Art of the Interview at #IRE12

— Amy Karon (@amykaron) June 15, 2012

Berens: When hunting for data on investigative pieces, remember that these stories are really about people. This is why we do it. #IRE12

— Tyler Dukes (@mtdukes) June 15, 2012

"Every investigative story begins w/a timeline. It will pay gold" in showing patterns, narrative writing. M. Berens, Seattle Times #IRE12

— John Russell (@JohnRussell99) June 15, 2012

Jun 15, 2012: 8:33 am

Local communities are spending billions of dollars in tax subsidies to lure companies in the hope of getting more jobs and economic development. But the subsidies are often based on dubious claims and consultants’ studies that reporters should be checking.

The irony is that corporate subsidies erode the tax base for public schools — one of the things that actually does bolster economic development.

A few tips offered by panelists Daniel Connolly, Jim Heaney, Greg LeRoy and David Cay Johnston:

Don’t rely solely on claims made by the company, the government agency, or their economic studies, which are often paid for by the people who want the subsidy. Figure out the true cost of the subsidy.

“Develop data,” said Heaney. “This is absolutely essential. You’ve got to go to the agency and ferret out all the costs. And most projects get multiple subsidies.”

Subsidy Tracker: Search a database of companies that receive government subsidies.

Is the subsidy for a retail store? It’s probably not necessary. The jobs are usually low-paying; there’s a glut of retail space in the United States; and these companies are often simply moving from on location to another in the same region.

Read the enabling legislation and the fine print. Connolly found a one-sided deal in which the government agency agreed not to enforce a clawback provision to get the subsidy back if the company failed to provide all the promised jobs.

Delve into the job numbers. Are these full-time or part-time jobs? Low-income jobs?

Figure out the benchmarks. What is the cost of the subsidy per job? Some deals, such as a data center for Verizon, came out to a couple million dollars per job. People relate to that kind of comparison.

Jun 15, 2012: 6:31 am

Data on deadline: Keli Rabon and Stephen Brock put together this list of handy databases you can use for breaking-news stories. “Be ready before breaking news hits,” Brock said at the panel “CAR under pressure.” “Practice the data.”

interesting websites from the presentation:

Geofeedia: Type in a location and get pictures and social media posts from people in that area. Great for breaking news.

Open Status Search: Search public Facebook updates without logging into Facebook.

Safer Products: Search consumer complaints and government recalls regarding thousands of consumer products on this website published by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Jun 14, 2012: 4:07 pm

Demystifying Web scraping: Ted Han and Sean Sposito’s Google Docs presentation. Nifty.

Jun 14, 2012: 3:47 pm

Tips on Twitter:

Lots of great tips flying around #IRE12. A good one: Readers don't care abt work you did to analyze data, just findings (via @Coloradoan_TH)

— Brian M. Rosenthal (@brianmrosenthal) June 14, 2012

Does your city participate in the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)? A gold mine of data on crime statistics. #IRE12

— Lindsay VanHulle (@LindsayVanHulle) June 14, 2012

Reading the #IRE2012 feed made me look up @alisonannyoung's Ghost Factories http://t.co/QlIt5HOL True multimedia. Nice video.

— Robin J Phillips (@RobinJP) June 14, 2012

#IRE12 blog post by @chelsbk How to get data from government agencies for any beat http://t.co/4U8XNxyX

— IRE and NICAR (@IRE_NICAR) June 14, 2012

Is anyone else who went to that privacy panel feeling a little paranoid now? #IRE2012

— Jordan Culver (@JordanCulver) June 14, 2012

Jun 14, 2012: 3:15 pm

Google Doc presentation of free computer-assisted reporting tools: Download a list of free resources discussed by Anthony DeBarros of USA Today and Matt Stiles of NPR.

Jun 14, 2012: 3:04 pm

Gannett Tumblr: Gannett journalists are covering the conference at “Gannett @ IRE. Great posts, pictures and videos.

Jun 14, 2012: 2:56 pm

Interactive wind map: Amazing map of wind patterns in the United States. “We hadn’t visualized wind before and hadn’t realized its power,” said Google’s Martin Wattenberg, who helped create the map by marshaling government data.

Jun 14, 2012: 12:38 pm

Panel tip: Get the records retention schedule.

From the Department of Things Reporters Should Really Be Doing A Whole Lot More Often, this tip comes from Ellen Gabler.

“I love teaching people about asking for data,” said Gabler this morning at “The ask: Requesting and negotiating for data.” To know what to ask for, you have to know what exists.

“Ask agencies for their records retention schedule,” Gabler said. This gives you a complete list of every type of document kept by the agency, which can point you to interesting records and databases.

Jun 14, 2012: 12:13 pm

Panel Tip: Create a data log.

Steve Doig and Elizabeth Lucas offered this gem at the “Taming monstrous datasets” panel.

When you analyze data, the queries can get really complicated. You might be doing some queries, crunch some numbers, and move on to the next part of the story. Then, weeks or months later when it’s time to publish and you’re bulletproofing those figures, an editor is going to ask how you came up with them. “You need to be able to answer that,” Doig said.

The solution is keeping a log of your work. It’s tedious, Lucas said, but it’s worth the trouble. When you turn in numbers for a story, attach a log documenting your process.

“An audit trail is absolutely essential,” Doig said.

Jun 14, 2012: 11:59 am

Muckety: Maps relationships between powerful people and organizations.

Muse: Useful tool for analyzing email archives.

30 free tools for data visualizations and analysis: Handy, sortable chart of free tools.

Jun 14, 2012: 10:37 am

Aviation Wildlife Strikes Database: Federal Aviation Administration data that tracks incidents involving birds and even deer that are struck by aircraft.

NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System: Tracks reports of safety concerns raised anonymously by pilots.

Jun 14, 2012: 10:00 am

Scout from the Sunlight Foundation: Get alerts emailed to you whenever Congress or state lawmakers discuss an issue you care about. It’s like Google alerts based on official government records. Free.

Follow the Money: Free workshop from the Reynolds Center about tracking companies’ influence on politics.

The post Live-blogging the IRE 2013 Conference in San Antonio: Resources that will help you be a better journalist appeared first on John Tedesco.

Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, we only sell our mothers for really, really good stories. But more importantly, we’re actually an amazingly friendly, collaborative bunch.

I’m in Boston where more than 1,000 people are trading tips, offering advice and learning from the best journalists around at this year’s Investigative Reporters and Editors conference.

This is the place to be if you’ve ever wondered, say, how Washington Post reporters figured out the complexities of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. You get to listen to the actual reporters who worked on the story. They’re essentially saying, “Here’s how we did it, and here are some tips we learned to help you work on the same kind of story.” It’s a goldmine for anyone who cares about journalism and wants to do it better.

These conferences generate a treasure trove of tipsheets that help journalists investigate just about any topic. I’ll be updating this post over the next few days with some of the more interesting links and resources I come across at the conference. Feel free to chat me up or contact me if there’s something you want to include.

Jul 1, 2013: 8:32 am

More awesome search tips from Google expert Daniel Russell, with real-world examples.

Jun 24, 2013: 12:07 pm

Creative ways to find sources:

Perhaps the best tip sheet at #IRE13 – http://t.co/gY0bLhOqKj on building sources from @mattapuzzo

— Nick Penzenstadler (@npenzenstadler) June 22, 2013

Jun 24, 2013: 10:27 am

How to find America’s worst charities: Excellent tips by Kendall Taggart at the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Jun 24, 2013: 7:40 am

Tips and tweets:

Compliments to @IRE_NICAR staff, led by @markhorvit for a great conference. Leaving San Antonio totally jazzed #IRE2013 #IRE13

— Mark Katches (@markkatches) June 23, 2013

SearchReSearch: TipSheet for IRE 2013 ( #IRE13 ) http://t.co/So9pCxVDTm great resource for maximizing your Google search capabilities

— Kenneth Olson (@ken_v_olson) June 23, 2013

MT @gijn: Getting past NO when govt pushes back. Presentation by David Jackson (Chicago Tribune) #transparency http://t.co/UtZKsd5BCS #IRE13

— Melissa Nann Burke (@nannburke) June 23, 2013

New blog post | "Beyond the written word – visual data in journalism – presentation and links from #IRE13 http://t.co/OOsFQix6Ht

— Ben Jones (@DataRemixed) June 23, 2013

Retention schedules kept on Web sites are like a "menu of documents" at an agency or government. (@jaimidowdell, #ire13)

— Becky Yerak (@beckyyerak) June 23, 2013

.@SunFoundation's @bill_allison and Jacob Fenton demonstrating great tools to follow influence in government: http://t.co/X7rcMiBK09 #ire13

— Joe Yerardi (@JoeYerardi) June 22, 2013

Jun 23, 2013: 1:22 pm

Investigating the wealthy sounds like a daunting task, but there’s actually a vast amount of historical resources available to the reporter who wants to try.

Investigative reporter Lise Olsen of the Houston Chronicle once visited a probate court clerk’s office to check out a tip that lawyers were making themselves rich at the expense of the estate of a wealthy but incapacited man. The clerk asked how many boxes she wanted to get in the case — there were 30.

In other words, probate courts are a gold mine. Olsen suggested looking at fee schedules and reports filed by court-appointed guardians.

It helps that wealthy Texans are chatty and often more approachable than their East and West-coast counterparts, said Mimi Swartz, an executive editor at Texas Monthly. In many cases, the only people who crave more attention than rich Texans are their lawyers. You can learn a lot about how the real world works by simply listening to their stories.

“One way to pay kickbacks to judges is to play poker and lose,” Swartz said.

Ancestry.com can help you find genealogical records. For a modest fee, you can find an actual picture of the ship that ferried specific European immigrants across the Atlantic.

A curious mind can always lead you to a good story. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Bill Dedman stumbled across the unusual case of reclusive heiress Huguette Clark while he was house hunting and checked the most expensive mansions that were for sale. It launched him on a story that started out as a feature about Clark, whose father was a wealthy copper-mine baron and disgraced lawmaker. But the story morphed into an investigation of Clark’s current whereabouts — she hadn’t lived in any of her mansions for years, and Dedman’s reporting raised questions about the people overseeing her vast fortune.

The bizarre tale struck a chord with readers. It went viral and Dedman ended up writing a book about it called “Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark and the Spending of a Great American Fortune.”

Dedman relied on cemetery records, depositions in court cases and old newspaper clippings. He obtained pictures of Clark’s estates and the artwork she painted. He wanted to do a good job describing them, so he talked to experts.

Botanical consultants told him precisely what kind of unique plants were on the estate grounds.

A professor of fashion history described the kind of apparel Clark wore as a young woman.

An art expert told Dedman that in the old days, women usually painted with pastels. Oil painting was considered a manly art form. Yet Clark chose to be an oil painter. It showed an intriguing snippet of her character — which Dedman would not have discovered if he hadn’t gone to the trouble of talking to a knowledgeable expert.

Jun 22, 2013: 7:57 pm

Tips on Twitter:

Not able to be at #ire13? Check out tipsheets http://t.co/nQEbHouZCR More will be added.

— Jaimi Dowdell (@JaimiDowdell) June 22, 2013

If you want my slides on tracking government contracting, you can view them here: http://t.co/zj1oG2WVCM #IRE13

— Danielle Ivory (@danielle_ivory) June 22, 2013

From the #IRE13 session on investigating the oil and gas industry, here's a link to a fracking chemical database: http://t.co/dx8Pca83YJ

— Cezary Podkul (@Cezary) June 22, 2013

There are nine exemptions in FOIA. The 10th one they don't tell you about. It's "We don't want to give it to you." @wcochran #ire13

— Cherrill Crosby (@cherrill_crosby) June 22, 2013

Tipsheet from our #IRE13 panel about how to win open-records battles with uncooperative agencies: http://t.co/LgHp6aiph2

— John Tedesco (@John_Tedesco) June 23, 2013

Investigating trafficking across the U.S.-Mexico border: http://t.co/OkiN0l7yGU #IRE13

— IRE and NICAR (@IRE_NICAR) June 22, 2013

Take a look at @writerbarton's groundbreaking story about a man's death in police custody http://t.co/X10inL9szw #IRE13

— Lauren Gilger (@laurengilger) June 22, 2013

Yes! The link from the "Search Rodeo" session at #IRE13 is now live, compliments of @BarbGray – check it out here: http://t.co/IH25yQCBOP

— Cezary Podkul (@Cezary) June 22, 2013

Download a PDF of my "Digging Deeper with Social Media" talk at #IRE13 | links, examples, tools | http://t.co/S1SqcfABfa #kipcamp

— DougHaddix (@DougHaddix) June 22, 2013

Slides from my #IRE13 demo of @TabulaPDF: https://t.co/Mf4OCREjq4

— mike tigas (@mtigas) June 22, 2013

https://twitter.com/sgoldstein/status/348548832109416448

Jun 21, 2013: 4:35 pm

Tips on Twitter:

Stalking a billionaire with a boat? NPR's Margot Williams: http://t.co/vf2IFVpfcl #IRE2013 #IRE13 pic.twitter.com/k4CfiW3qmv

— Amy Pyle (@amy_pyle) June 21, 2013

New text searchable database of IRS 990 nonprofit forms from past 10 years via @LukeRosiak http://t.co/qAj4sBSViT #IRE13 #kipcamp

— DougHaddix (@DougHaddix) June 21, 2013

Getting skeptical sources to talk: "Sometimes people are more afraid of looking dumb than giving away sensitive information". So true #IRE13

— Aisha Dow (@aishamae) June 21, 2013

Enterprise on the ed beat handout here. #ire13 http://t.co/0i9GQRm7JX

— Mc Nelly Torres (@WatchdogDiva) June 21, 2013

#IRE13 Center for Investigative Reporting offers lots of reporters tools http://t.co/ClEWp47NCZ

— Bennett Loudon (@BennettLoudon) June 21, 2013

.@DavidBarstow: You need to spend a lot of time w the documents, reading everything and "marinate yourself in the information" #ire13

— Kelsey Ryan (@kelsey_ryan) June 21, 2013

Whatever you can't wait to tell a friend, don't leave it out of the story: advice from Jerry Mitchell, journalist. #IRE13 #GannettConnects

— Britt Kennerly (@bybrittkennerly) June 21, 2013

Jun 21, 2013: 4:11 pm

Check out interesting panels you missed at the IRE conference by reading the IRE Conference blog and Gannett’s IRE 2013 tumblr. Armies of reporters and journalism students are posting good stuff, including:

Delving into crime data and finding flaws

Transparency: Getting past “No”

Tips for environmental investigations

Jun 21, 2013: 11:40 am

Tips on Twitter about investigating charities:

https://twitter.com/melcrowe/status/348116910254198785

Investigating #nonprofits tip sheet #ire13 https://t.co/O9oWxFTz1j

— Kelsey Ryan (@kelsey_ryan) June 21, 2013

#IRE13: @CIRonline database of 8000 state regulatory actions against charities & solicitors: http://t.co/OjdYiUHgKo #IRE2013

— Douglas Lucas (@DouglasLucas) June 21, 2013

Jun 21, 2013: 11:23 am

So much information at IRE conferences is about how and where to find documents and information. It’s always interesting to hear what you should do after you amass that giant mountain of data and documents.

During yesterday’s Business Investigations panel, Reporter David Heath of the Center for Public Integrity talked about “the magic of simply sorting by date” when you take all your documents from a variety of sources and plug the information into a spreadsheet to make a timeline.

“It’s a very simple process,” Heath said. “It sounds too basic to talk about.” Heath includes everything he finds in the timeline early on in the reporting process because at first you don’t know what’s important. As the chronology grows, patterns, connections and narratives begin to emerge.

While investigating a shady company, Heath found a corporate filing signed by a man who claimed to lead the firm. But during that same time period, the same person also signed a different document in which he claimed to have nothing to do with the company. Heath later learned one of the government disclosures had been forged.

“Timelines are essential,” Heath said.

Other interesting tidbits at the panel:

Not many people know about LinkedIn’s advanced search page, which can help you find current and former employees of companies.

Journalists can get LinkedIn premium accounts for free, which allows you to email people on LinkedIn without being in their network. Very handy for finding sources.

Annual reports filed by companies with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission can be daunting. But be sure to check out sections titled “risk factors” and “legal proceedings.” These are where companies are usually at their most honest. They lay out things that could go wrong and major litigation. For companies that are very skilled at polishing their image, these sections help you find “chinks in their armor,” Heath said.

Jun 20, 2013: 3:31 pm

Best #IRE13 tweets so far:

#IRE13 slides from "Compared to What…" with @JsavageCaller available here http://t.co/BXnmfQ8IqE Hit us up if you have questions.

— Coulter Jones (@coulterjones) June 20, 2013

If you missed our kickoff session for #IRE13, all the resources are here: http://t.co/UHQvlptmv2 #BizJ

— Reynolds Center (@BizJournalism) June 20, 2013

If, like me, you missed the session on cheap data wrangling tools, get the presentation and tip sheet here: http://t.co/jwJ0g3EbjA #IRE13

— Tyler Dukes (@mtdukes) June 20, 2013

Here's Google Drive link to spreadsheet of tipsheet from this am's session #IRE13 Apps Reporters Can Use.xlsx – https://t.co/FDNJcdv7vl

— Stephen Stock (@StephenStockTV) June 20, 2013

We're happy to announce free Tableau Desktop for journalists: http://t.co/qcA82sT6M3 @tableau #IRE13

— Ellie Fields (@eleanorpd) June 20, 2013

How #IRE13 comes together, in pictures. http://t.co/b7Rd5hXwli

— IRE and NICAR (@IRE_NICAR) June 20, 2013

My hotel at #IRE13 welcomes guests by explaining why things could get punch-drunk crazy after the Spurs game. pic.twitter.com/s4bC13QOVx

— Ben Giles (@ben_giles) June 20, 2013

Jun 20, 2013: 2:55 pm

Even before the 2013 IRE Conference officially started, the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism hosted a free seminar Wednesday about finding interesting news stories in seemingly dry economic data.

One cool thing about this panel was how they showcased actual news stories, then worked backwards and revealed how the kernel of the story idea was found in the data.

For this article about the Eagle Ford Shale boom that ran in the San Antonio Express-News, the reporters did the following:

• Visited the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis website;
• Clicked on the “interactive” tab;
• Sifted through a series of menus that took them down to the county level;
• Checked how much per-capita personal income had increased in the Eagle Ford Shale counties. Once you get the data you can look at it in a variety of formats, such as tables or charts:

This story and other articles used as examples all relied on economic data — but the stories were also filled with the voices of real people to bring those numbers to life.

All the resources and presentations discussed in the seminar are available here.

Jun 20, 2013: 2:50 pm

Naturally, the 2013 IRE Conference is on Guidebook. You can check the conference schedule on your phone, save the events you want to attend and get reminders. I also like how you can view a map of the hotel, read about the speakers and check the #IRE13 feeds on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Yet another cool resource I learned from IRE.

Jun 29, 2012: 2:13 pm

Missed a panel at the IRE 2012 Conference in Boston? Tipsheets for members are available at IRE’s website. Yet another reason to join IRE.

Next year’s conference is in San Antonio, and we’re already talking about upcoming panels, speakers and events. Contact me if you have any ideas.

Thanks for a great time in Boston and hope to see you next year.

Jun 22, 2012: 10:39 am

How to attract an online audience for your investigation: http://t.co/beSA1th5 Awesome tips by @jessicaplautz from #IRE12

— ICIJ (@ICIJorg) June 21, 2012

Jun 21, 2012: 7:53 am

How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques.

Jun 17, 2012: 9:09 pm

Tips on Twitter (via Katie Foody’s awesome Storify collection of tips from the IRE conference):

Need help cleaning up data? Mr. Data Converter, Mr. People, Google Refine. #IRE12 #irefree

— Lindsey Rogers Cook (@Lindzcook) June 14, 2012

The walkthrough of my Refine class, with sample data & slides. Arm yourself for the monkey apocalypse: http://t.co/GuCsIkEO #IRE12

— Tom Meagher (@ultracasual) June 15, 2012

Mapping & location-based data a big untapped resource for journalists. Guardian tutorial on Google Fusion: http://t.co/RIuCrpyW. #IRE2012

— Bill Mitchell (@bmitch) June 16, 2012

So many great Web tools coming out of Sunday #IRE12 session. Try www [dot] cometdocs [dot] com to convert PDF data to Excel. So cool.

— Lindsay VanHulle (@LindsayVanHulle) June 17, 2012

This. RT @willcarless: Great tip: use http://t.co/Fote8Hch to search for photos and see if they are fake #IRE12

— Tyler Dukes (@mtdukes) June 16, 2012

Gem of “Tracking Private Parts of Public Officials” Gov’t firewalls that log outbound web requests. Where are your officials surfing? #IRE12

— Saul Tannenbaum (@stannenb) June 16, 2012

Jun 17, 2012: 5:08 am

Fellow #ire12 conference goers. Try the app camscaner to scan and make PDF documents with your smartphone. Best app EVER.

— jeremyjojola (@jeremyjojola) June 17, 2012

Jun 16, 2012: 9:25 pm

https://twitter.com/willhuntsberry/status/214163754848485376/

Jun 16, 2012: 4:23 pm

One “downside” about IRE conferences is you wind up amassing more great ideas and tipsheets than you know what to do with. How do you keep track of everything, and not forget an insight that might be useful months from now?

You might want to create your own tip sheet, or handbook, that you can use throughout your journalism career.

Use Google Docs, Word, a spreadsheet, or whatever format that’s easiest for you.

Organize it by topic, such as “People Finders” or “Campaign Finance.”

Under each topic, link to useful websites, and plug in your notes of the insights you learned at the conference.

My handbook is old and needs to be pruned. But you can see how it works. If I want to do a thorough job backgrounding someone, I go to the “Backgrounding” section of my handbook and start going down the list of things to check — licensing files, marriage licenses, etc.

Any time you come across a resource you think might come in handy, add it to your handbook. You might need it tomorrow — or a year from now.

Jun 16, 2012: 3:38 pm

Full link for #IRE12 #IRE2012 presentations on social media and backgrounding: http://t.co/T72BIbcc

— DougHaddix (@DougHaddix) June 16, 2012

Jun 16, 2012: 1:28 pm

Panel videos: IRE is posting videos of some panels at its latakoo page. Panels include tips for investigating businesses and a conversation about the state of the media after the News Corp. phone hacking scandal.

Jun 16, 2012: 9:16 am

Archives and historical documents can be powerful tools for journalists, even on deadline.

“It’s been my secret weapon,” said James Neff, investigations editor at the Seattle Times.

Some cool resources:

Sanborn fire insurance maps: These old maps offer rich historical details about buildings and neighborhoods. “They were like Google Streetview back in the day,” said Alison Young of USA Today, who relied on the maps for her project, “Ghost Factories.”

Regional collections of the maps are often available at local libraries, historical societies and universities.

Online Public Archives: A sweeping search of presidential archives and other holdings of the U.S. National Archives. “This is what I would consider one of the top tools,” Neff said.

Finding guides: Used to find pertinent material, finding guides are sometimes posted online, or archives will send them to you. Check out WorldCat, a library catalogue that includes 50,000 finding guides. “It’s the largest online library catalogue in the world,” Neff said.

Jun 16, 2012: 7:20 am

Check out the story behind the story of Craig Harris’ investigation of Arizona pension funds. Great stuff.

Jun 15, 2012: 4:46 pm

Resources used by Duff Wilson of Reuters for his investigation of the food industry and its lobbying against stricter health standards for children.

Influence Explorer: An overview of campaign finance, lobbying, earmark, contractor misconduct and federal spending data.

Open Secrets: Campaign-finance data broken down by industry.

National Institute on Money in State Politics.

Federal Election Commission: For contributions at the federal level.

Secretary of the Senate: For lobbying reports.

Jun 15, 2012: 11:44 am

Tips from Sara Ganim, reporter for the Patriot-News, who broke the Jerry Sandusky scandal:

When looking for a job ask: “What kind of journalists are you going to be working for?” Is this a newsroom that will allow you to spend a lot of time on investigative stories? When the Patriot-News hired her, Ganim’s bosses recognized they had a big story on their hands, cut her loose from her beat duties, and encouraged her to do what she had to do.
“You wouldn’t find that in every newsroom,” Ganim said.

Social media was NO help at first for the Sandusky story. Ganim had to rely on the old-school methods of knocking on doors. But when Sandusky was arrested, the newspaper “did a 180” and started using Twitter all the time.

“Twitter is a really great way to stay in touch with your readers,” Ganim said. At Joe Paterno’s public memorial service, people on Twitter were asking her questions, guiding her to things to look for. “I found it incredibly helpful,” she said. “It’s a good gauge of what your readers want to know.”

Try to give readers what no one else is giving them. When the news about the sexual assault charges broke, “AP was kicking our butt. They were getting all this great information, what Penn State was doing. My boss was freaking out.”

Ganim didn’t want to rehash what the Associated Press was reporting — she argued with her boss that they needed to go back to their sources, the parents of the victims, to get their reaction. No one else could do that.

“That’s really how we were able to stay ahead,” Ganim said.

Jun 15, 2012: 11:09 am

Investigating Power: A vast video archive of interviews with investigative journalists — several of whom are speaking right now at the IRE Conference.

Jun 15, 2012: 10:18 am

Tips on Twitter:

Ira Rosen of 60 Minutes: “Dead space is your friend. You ask a question and you let it lay there and people fill up that dead space.” #IRE12

— Taylor Dobbs (@taylordobbs) June 15, 2012

Pulitzer winner James Grimaldi: "Showing the quid is easy. The quo is easy. It's the pro that's tough. How did connection happen?" #IRE12

— John Russell (@JohnRussell99) June 15, 2012

Don't settle for interviews with PR people. Insist on talking to the real source. The Art of the Interview at #IRE12

— Amy Karon (@amykaron) June 15, 2012

Berens: When hunting for data on investigative pieces, remember that these stories are really about people. This is why we do it. #IRE12

— Tyler Dukes (@mtdukes) June 15, 2012

"Every investigative story begins w/a timeline. It will pay gold" in showing patterns, narrative writing. M. Berens, Seattle Times #IRE12

— John Russell (@JohnRussell99) June 15, 2012

Jun 15, 2012: 8:33 am

Local communities are spending billions of dollars in tax subsidies to lure companies in the hope of getting more jobs and economic development. But the subsidies are often based on dubious claims and consultants’ studies that reporters should be checking.

The irony is that corporate subsidies erode the tax base for public schools — one of the things that actually does bolster economic development.

A few tips offered by panelists Daniel Connolly, Jim Heaney, Greg LeRoy and David Cay Johnston:

Don’t rely solely on claims made by the company, the government agency, or their economic studies, which are often paid for by the people who want the subsidy. Figure out the true cost of the subsidy.

“Develop data,” said Heaney. “This is absolutely essential. You’ve got to go to the agency and ferret out all the costs. And most projects get multiple subsidies.”

Subsidy Tracker: Search a database of companies that receive government subsidies.

Is the subsidy for a retail store? It’s probably not necessary. The jobs are usually low-paying; there’s a glut of retail space in the United States; and these companies are often simply moving from on location to another in the same region.

Read the enabling legislation and the fine print. Connolly found a one-sided deal in which the government agency agreed not to enforce a clawback provision to get the subsidy back if the company failed to provide all the promised jobs.

Delve into the job numbers. Are these full-time or part-time jobs? Low-income jobs?

Figure out the benchmarks. What is the cost of the subsidy per job? Some deals, such as a data center for Verizon, came out to a couple million dollars per job. People relate to that kind of comparison.

Jun 15, 2012: 6:31 am

Data on deadline: Keli Rabon and Stephen Brock put together this list of handy databases you can use for breaking-news stories. “Be ready before breaking news hits,” Brock said at the panel “CAR under pressure.” “Practice the data.”

interesting websites from the presentation:

Geofeedia: Type in a location and get pictures and social media posts from people in that area. Great for breaking news.

Open Status Search: Search public Facebook updates without logging into Facebook.

Safer Products: Search consumer complaints and government recalls regarding thousands of consumer products on this website published by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Jun 14, 2012: 4:07 pm

Demystifying Web scraping: Ted Han and Sean Sposito’s Google Docs presentation. Nifty.

Jun 14, 2012: 3:47 pm

Tips on Twitter:

Lots of great tips flying around #IRE12. A good one: Readers don't care abt work you did to analyze data, just findings (via @Coloradoan_TH)

— Brian M. Rosenthal (@brianmrosenthal) June 14, 2012

Does your city participate in the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS)? A gold mine of data on crime statistics. #IRE12

— Lindsay VanHulle (@LindsayVanHulle) June 14, 2012

Reading the #IRE2012 feed made me look up @alisonannyoung's Ghost Factories http://t.co/QlIt5HOL True multimedia. Nice video.

— Robin J Phillips (@RobinJP) June 14, 2012

#IRE12 blog post by @chelsbk How to get data from government agencies for any beat http://t.co/4U8XNxyX

— IRE and NICAR (@IRE_NICAR) June 14, 2012

Is anyone else who went to that privacy panel feeling a little paranoid now? #IRE2012

— Jordan Culver (@JordanCulver) June 14, 2012

Jun 14, 2012: 3:15 pm

Google Doc presentation of free computer-assisted reporting tools: Download a list of free resources discussed by Anthony DeBarros of USA Today and Matt Stiles of NPR.

Jun 14, 2012: 3:04 pm

Gannett Tumblr: Gannett journalists are covering the conference at “Gannett @ IRE. Great posts, pictures and videos.

Jun 14, 2012: 2:56 pm

Interactive wind map: Amazing map of wind patterns in the United States. “We hadn’t visualized wind before and hadn’t realized its power,” said Google’s Martin Wattenberg, who helped create the map by marshaling government data.

Jun 14, 2012: 12:38 pm

Panel tip: Get the records retention schedule.

From the Department of Things Reporters Should Really Be Doing A Whole Lot More Often, this tip comes from Ellen Gabler.

“I love teaching people about asking for data,” said Gabler this morning at “The ask: Requesting and negotiating for data.” To know what to ask for, you have to know what exists.

“Ask agencies for their records retention schedule,” Gabler said. This gives you a complete list of every type of document kept by the agency, which can point you to interesting records and databases.

Jun 14, 2012: 12:13 pm

Panel Tip: Create a data log.

Steve Doig and Elizabeth Lucas offered this gem at the “Taming monstrous datasets” panel.

When you analyze data, the queries can get really complicated. You might be doing some queries, crunch some numbers, and move on to the next part of the story. Then, weeks or months later when it’s time to publish and you’re bulletproofing those figures, an editor is going to ask how you came up with them. “You need to be able to answer that,” Doig said.

The solution is keeping a log of your work. It’s tedious, Lucas said, but it’s worth the trouble. When you turn in numbers for a story, attach a log documenting your process.

“An audit trail is absolutely essential,” Doig said.

Jun 14, 2012: 11:59 am

Muckety: Maps relationships between powerful people and organizations.

Muse: Useful tool for analyzing email archives.

30 free tools for data visualizations and analysis: Handy, sortable chart of free tools.

Jun 14, 2012: 10:37 am

Aviation Wildlife Strikes Database: Federal Aviation Administration data that tracks incidents involving birds and even deer that are struck by aircraft.

NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System: Tracks reports of safety concerns raised anonymously by pilots.

Jun 14, 2012: 10:00 am

Scout from the Sunlight Foundation: Get alerts emailed to you whenever Congress or state lawmakers discuss an issue you care about. It’s like Google alerts based on official government records. Free.

Follow the Money: Free workshop from the Reynolds Center about tracking companies’ influence on politics.

The post Live-blogging the IRE 2012 Conference in Boston: Resources that will help you be a better investigative journalist appeared first on John Tedesco.

The post ‘I’m an investigative reporter. And you’re busted’ appeared first on John Tedesco.

American Journalism Review delved into the declining state of investigative journalism last week with articles and videos that quantified what’s been lost — and what might be gained:

Related: How to send a news tip to an investigative reporter

The post The declining state of investigative journalism appeared first on John Tedesco.

What others are saying about watchdog journalism:

The post Watchdog blog roundup for 5-24-10 appeared first on John Tedesco.

But then the conversation veered in a direction unfamiliar to traditional newsrooms. Instead of planning how to get the story published before word of it leaked, the excited editors started throwing out ideas for how they could share Johnson’s reporting with a large array of competitive news outlets across the state and around the country. No one would get a scoop; rather, every outlet would run the story at around the same time, customized to resonate with its audience, be they newspaper subscribers, Web readers, television viewers, or radio listeners. California Watch’s donors—at this point, a handful of high-powered foundations—expect it to publish high-impact investigative journalism about California as widely as possible.

My favorite line: How journalists are a persistent bunch and continue to push for ways to do watchdog journalism. “I do have a need to investigate the bastards,” said Charles Lewis, the founder of the Center for Public Integrity.

Related: How to securely contact an investigative journalist

My only quibble with this story is that it has a Texas-sized hole: There’s no mention of the Texas Tribune or Texas Watchdog. Wuh?

The post ‘A need to investigate the bastards’ appeared first on John Tedesco.