NICAR conference comes to Lex

Yearly meeting makes first-ever visit to Kentucky

By Linda J. Johnson
C.A.R. Coordinator
Lexington Herald-Leader

September in Kentucky usually means the start of fall, which means horse racing and basketball season can’t be far away.

 But this year, September will mean something new for Lexington and Kentucky.

Between 400 and 500 journalists from around the world will descend upon Lexington beginning Sept. 14 for four days of hard-core training by national experts through the National Institute of Computer-Assisted Reporting.

It’s an opportunity to learn new things, to advance skills and network with the best CAR-experts in the business.

NICAR, based at the University of Missouri, is a non-profit organization that holds a yearly conference in different places around the country.

But it’s unlike most conferences where you sit and listen to lectures hour after endless hour.

This conference is mostly hands-on training in such programs as Excel, Access and FoxPro.

Sessions will also include learning mapping skills, how to use the internet for reporting and some statistical analysis.

The conference will also include more than 50 panels led by reporters who have done work on everything from school test scores and agriculture to sessions on the census.

NICAR’s conference in Lexington will be the perfect place to hone the necessary skills to make sense of all that census data that will be coming out next year.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance for Kentucky journalists and students to take advantage of the vast array of skills and knowledge gathered at one time in Central Kentucky.

The cost is $150 for IRE members for the whole event, but they also have a student rate and a daily rate. That may sound expensive, but think of it this way: It won’t ever be this close again.

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