Jennifer Smith Richards @jsmithrichards, The Columbus Dispatch Christopher Weaver @cdweaver, Wall Street Journal Kate Martin @KateReports, The News Tribune, Tacoma
All spending
Can use to find purchase orders, then FOIA those
Batch tasks
Do small tasks to fill in time (file FOIA while waiting for callbacks)
Keep lists of stories to do: one list of short-turnarounds, one list of bigger projects
Estimate time accurately (e.g. overestimate time)
Make sure it's a story before you say it's a story
Hoard data.
Talk to companies that specialize in analytics of your industry.
Records retention schedule
Roadkill database
WSJ BLS and Census data to find locations that might be good places to cover specific stories
Stuff one arm of government sends to another.
Hospital Cost Report
"Let yourself fall down the rabbit hole". Go to a federal agency and see what's available.
Request city cellphone numbers and who's assigned to them.
Monitor websites: Change detection, Google Alerts
CometDocs (get it from IRE, for members)
Dataset of claims against the city for damages from vehicles
EPA spills database
Deer hunting data: Most prolific deer hunters in the state
Part of data reporting is evangelizing to beat reporters. Having to let go of old beat.
Run interference on other people who want reporters to do more work.
Let beat reporters know data exists. Monitor budgets. "If you ever want to do something like that, I can help."
"Being super-available."
Swoop in and ask for data.