New IRE Training Grows out of Boot Camps
Almost 300 journalists participated in three “watchdog boot camps” that Investigative Reporters and Editors presented for Gannett this summer.
Each session opened with a rapid-fire presentation of the latest digital tools available for digging into stories and presenting information in new, interactive ways.
And after each, reporters and editors asked how they can stay on top of the rapidly changing tools. New software and applications pop up constantly.
Mark Horvit, executive director of IRE, and his team have agreed to help us with that.
The IRE folks work to stay on top of new technologies, techniques and ideas.
They have agreed to present a webinar for Gannett journalists every six months to let us know what’s new.
We will schedule the first one early in 2011. Details to come later, but based on what we saw at the boot camps, these will be packed with good information.
At each boot camp, participants were asked to commit to starting one story when they returned home. They sent those to me, and now I’m beginning to get almost daily links to the stories that are resulting.
Readers across Gannett are receiving more and better watchdog journalism because of the involvement of so many journalists in this training.
We will select some examples to share regularly on the GANIRE Web site.