<blockquote>Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. is a grassroots nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of investigative reporting. IRE was formed in 1975 to create a forum in which journalists throughout the world could help each other by sharing story ideas, news gathering techniques and news sources. IRE provides members access to thousands of reporting tip sheets and other materials through its resource center and hosts conferences and specialized training throughout the country." <strong>Source:</strong> <a href="http://www.ire.org/about/" target="_blank">Investigative Reporters and Editors</a>
<h4 style="padding-left: 60px;">IRE's programs and projects</h4>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;"><strong>National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;">"Founded in 1989, NICAR has trained thousands of journalists in the practical skills of finding, prying loose and analyzing electronic information.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;">NICAR also maintains a library of databases containing government data on a wide array of subjects, including airplane service difficulty reports, storm events, FBI crime data, fatal highway accidents, problems with medical devices and federal contracts awarded to private companies. This is just a short list of the more than 40 datasets in the collection." <strong>Source</strong>: <a href="http://future.ire.org/nicar/" target="_blank">IRE</a><strong>
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<p style="padding-left: 60px;">&nbsp;</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;"><strong>CensusIRE</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-6841" title="Home - census.ire.org" src="http://www.journalismaccelerator.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Home-census.ire_.org_.jpg" alt="" width="275" height="41" />"[IRE’s] ongoing Census project [is] designed to provide journalists with a simpler way to access 2010 Census data so they can spend less time importing and managing the data and more time exploring and reporting the data. The project is the result of work by journalists from the The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, the Spokesman-Review (Spokane, Wash.) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, funded through generous support from the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the Missouri School of Journalism." <strong>Source:</strong> <a href="http://census.ire.org" target="_blank">CensusIRE</a><strong>
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<p style="padding-left: 60px;">&nbsp;</p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;"><strong>DocumentCloud</strong></p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-6840" title="DocumentCloud" src="http://www.journalismaccelerator.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/DocumentCloud.jpg" alt="" width="273" height="73" />"DocumentCloud is a project that uses collaborative methods to host and organize primary-source documents ... The project is a software system, website, and set of open standards intended as a tool for investigative reporting, and only news organizations, bloggers and watchdog groups can upload documents there. Its 200-plus contributors include many news organizations as well as other groups such as the ACLU, National Security Archive and Sunlight Foundation. DocumentCloud’s software, however, is open-source, and anyone can view the documents ... DocumentCloud’s technology has been used on the websites of such news organizations as PBS, ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune to allow readers to search annotated copies of source documents." <strong>Source:</strong> <a href="http://www.niemanlab.org/encyclo/documentcloud/" target="_blank">Encyclo</a></p>
<p style="padding-left: 60px;">"DocumentCloud was founded in 2009 with a grant from the Knight News Challenge. After two years as an independent nonprofit organization, DocumentCloud became a project of Investigative Reporters and Editors in June of 2011." <strong>Source: </strong><a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/about">DocumentCloud</a></p>
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