Campaign Finance Seminars
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 Money Trail Workshops Plans are under way for more workshops. Let us know if you want to help sponsor one in a specific location. Past Campaign Finance Seminars Knowing how to truly analyze campaign contributions and grasp the political cash flow has become as essential to basic election coverage as having candidates' home phone numbers. Investigative Reporters and Editors is offering a series of campaign finance workshops that combine expert tips on tracking money in politics with IRE's renowned hands-on computer-assisted reporting training. The Joyce Foundation is helping fund these jam-packed two-day sessions known as "The Money Trail: Tracking Campaign Cash." The Saturday-Sunday workshops come to the Midwest states first. Each workshop will be tailored to the state we're in. Most of Saturday will be panels and demonstrations featuring experts on federal campaign money from the D.C. - based Center for Responsive Politics and local experts on state-level contributions. We'll also show reporters how to trace the flow of soft money from D.C. into their state and what the state is doing with it. The remaining session will be hands-on CAR training using federal and state-level data. CAR training will include: analyzing databases; using spreadsheets to crunch numbers; importing contribution data off the Web; joining databases (such as contribution data to state contract data) to find links between who earns state business and who funds state politicos. Reporters will leave with tons of story ideas and the skills to research them. |