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The short link to this list is j.mp/nicar15 (case sensitive).

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Investigative Reporters and Editors logoThis is the fifth anniversary of my NICAR Links List! If you’ve found the lists helpful, consider donating some money to IRE to help them continue training people and bringing NICAR to you. Donate today. You know you want to.

And now, on to business…
It’s back! The annual collection of presentations, tutorials, and resources from IRE’s CAR conference. This year’s event comes to you from Atlanta, March 5 – 8. Keep up with the chatter on Twitter at #NICAR15.

For attendees, IRE has created an schedule in The Guidebook app (iOS, Android & Web). Very helpful for planning the tactical mission known as “managing your time.”

Jeremy Singer-Vine also created CSV & JSON outputs of the schedule, along with the Python scraper to DIY. And there’s a Google spreadsheet with all the sessions. Awesome.

If you’re presenting at NICAR and would like this list to include your resource (presentation, tutorial repo, etc.), please send it using this form, or ping me on Twitter @MacDiva.

If you’re looking for a job, IRE keeps a list of open positions as does Knight-Mozilla OpenNews at Source Jobs. If you’re specifically interested in data visualization jobs, look here.

California Code Rush 2015And finally, NICAR in the Peach State will see its first California Code Rush. The Golden State’s campaign finance and lobbying database is online, and the California Code Rush aims to make the data easier to download, review and republish. It’s an open source project with lots of opportunities to help.

For previous years’ tutorials, videos, presentations and tips see the lists from 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011.

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Presentations & Tutorials | Software & Tools | References & Additional Resources | Lightning Talks | Work Samples

Presentations & Tutorials


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Presentations & Tutorials | Software & Tools | References & Additional Resources | Lightning Talks | Work Samples


Software & Tools

  • Tarbell – Google spreadsheets-based website publishing tool
  • Landsat-ul: A utility to search, download and process Landsat 8 satellite imagery
  • JPL’s SMAP Viewer (SMAP is “Soil Moisture Active Passive” satellite imaging)
  • Plotly – graph and share your data
  • Plug Tableau into Excel with Tableau’s Reshaper
  • Bokeh Python interactive visualization library
  • markdowneyjr turns Markdown into JSON for slightly easier copyediting of data files
  • Changedetection.com tracks website page changes and notifies you.
  • The New York Times graphics desk’s ai2html changes Adobe Illustrator files into HTML & CSS | example output
  • The New York Times graphics desk’s ArchieML – a structured text format optimized for human writability
  • Minezy email exploration tool (prototype by T. Christian Miller)
  • TimelineCurator works with TimelineJS to extract temporal references in freeform text to generate a visual timeline
  • The Upshot’s Bedfellows command-line tool for exploring the PAC donor-recipient relationship


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Presentations & Tutorials | Software & Tools | References & Additional Resources | Lightning Talks | Work Samples


References & Other Resources from NICARians


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Presentations & Tutorials | Software & Tools | References & Additional Resources | Lightning Talks | Work Samples


Lighting Talks


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Presentations & Tutorials | Software & Tools | References & Additional Resources | Lightning Talks | Work Samples


Work Samples

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Presentations & Tutorials | Software & Tools | References & Additional Resources | Lightning Talks | Work Samples