IRE will offer several of its core sessions, designed to help you use data and documents in your reporting, find information quickly and hold officials accountable. In addition, this workshop will give you tips on interviewing and digging deeper with social media, search engines and much more. You’ll learn practical tips to help you build meatier enterprise stories, even on deadline.
These sessions are designed for reporters, editors, and producers from small, midsize and large publications, TV, radio stations, Web-only news sites and news blogs. Freelancers, students and journalism educators are also encouraged to attend.
Join IRE’s experienced trainers and a group of veteran reporters for our Watchdog Workshop Thursday, August 29, 2019.
This program is made possible thanks to support from the Ethics & Excellence in Journalism Foundation.
Registration for the IRE Watchdog Bootcamp is $25. Registration is available for $25 (includes a one-year IRE membership for attendees that meet the IRE membership terms and a one-year renewal for current IRE members). The fee does not include NLGJA National Convention registration. Registration for the IRE Watchdog Bootcamp is available here.
Speakers: Madi Alexander, Jan Diehm, Cindy Galli, Jaweed Kaleem, Pete Madden, Lauren McGaughy, Francisco Vara-Orta, Katie Zavadski, Dan Zimmerman, Lee Zurik
MADI ALEXANDER is a data reporter for Bloomberg Government in Washington D.C., where she covers Congress, elections and campaign finance. She is originally from Moore, Oklahoma, and has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. Alexander keeps a database of the national parks and historical sites she’s visited, which so far is 38.
JAN DIEHM is a journalist engineer at The Pudding, where she wields data and design to craft visual essays. She appreciates the finer things in life: LEGO sets, Southern delicacies such as pimento cheese and fried green tomatoes and vintage Britney Spears. She’s had stops at CNN, the Guardian US, ABC News and the Hartford Courant, among others.
CINDY GALLI is chief of investigative projects for ABC News in New York. She oversees a team of award-winning network correspondents and producers specializing in investigations ranging from government fraud and waste to corporate corruption and consumer issues. Galli also heads up collaborative investigative projects between ABC News and network affiliates around the country. A member of Investigative Reporters and Editors since 1994, her work has garnered regional and national awards over 25 years of reporting.
JAWEED KALEEM is a national correspondent at the Los Angeles Times, where he writes about race and ethnicity. He frequently reports on immigrant communities, civil rights and religion, among other issues. Before joining The Times, Kaleem covered religion and general assignment news at HuffPost and the Miami Herald. A graduate of Emerson College, he grew up in Northern Virginia.
PETE MADDEN is a reporter and editor for the ABC News Investigative Unit, which contributes coverage of national security, political corruption and human rights to “Good Morning America,” “World News Tonight with David Muir,” “Nightline,” “20/20” and abcnews.com. Previously, he was a senior producer at Sports Illustrated, where he co-reported the magazine’s “First Golfer” feature about President Donald Trump’s global golf business. Trump called it “fake news” but the Washington Post called “one of the best pieces of political journalism of the Trump age.” He is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.
LAUREN McGAUGHY is a state politics reporter for The Dallas Morning News in Austin. She covers the Texas legislature, courts and state agencies, with a focus on criminal justice and LGBTQ rights issues. She previously worked for The Houston Chronicle and The Times-Picayune, covering state politics at both papers. She’s a graduate of Georgetown University and UCLA, where she studied U.S.-Sino relations and Islamic Studies. She likes comic books and cats.
FRANCISCO VARA-ORTA is a training director for Investigative Reporters and Editors. He has worked for 18 years in professional newsrooms throughout the country, published by Chalkbeat, Education Week, the Los Angeles Times, Austin Business Journal, Houston Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman, San Antonio Express-News, Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, Nieman Storyboard, Laredo Morning Times and La Prensa de San Antonio.
KATIE ZAVADSKI is ProPublica’s research editor. She oversees the research team, works on the Trump, Inc. podcast and runs ProPublica’s Emerging Reporters program. Prior to joining ProPublica in 2018, she worked as a reporter and editor at The Daily Beast, New York Magazine and Newsweek. She studied comparative religion at Harvard.
DAN ZIMMERMAN is a staff attorney at Phelps Dunbar in New Orleans, specializing in media law, first amendment litigation and intellectual property law. He has successfully litigated on behalf of media clients to obtain the calendar that helped lead to the conviction of former New Orleans Mayor Nagin on corruption charges and the autopsy reports of Katrina victims at Memorial/Baptist hospital. On the intellectual property side, his has represented Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, and Beyoncé.
LEE ZURIK is an evening news anchor and chief investigative reporter at WVUE-TV in New Orleans and director of investigations at Raycom Media. Zurik has been honored with many of journalism’s top awards, including two George Foster Peabody Awards, three duPont-Columbia Awards, the IRE Medal, three IRE Certificates and eight national Edward R. Murrow Awards. Before Hurricane Katrina, Lee was a sports anchor/reporter. He taught himself to be an investigative reporter by reading IRE resources (books and tipsheets) and attending IRE conferences.