It was different attending the #NICAR26 data journalism conference this year now that I'm retired! And kind of strange not returning home to a newsroom.
My latest #NextChapter post:
https://nextchapter.machlis.com/posts/2026-03-15-attending-a-conference-as-a-retiree-this-time-with-former-peers/
#Retirement

Now both the front end and back end for Investigative Reporters & Editors' new semantic-searchable archives -- unveiled at #NICAR26 -- have been open sourced 🎉🎉
Front end (SvelteKit): https://github.com/ireapps/ire-archive-frontend
Back end (FastAPI): https://github.com/ireapps/ire-archive-backend
#DDJ

📚 I'm happy to release free, online textbooks covering the two courses I taught at the #NICAR26 data journalism conference put on by Investigative Reporters and Editors last week in Indianapolis.

Hey R and Python folks at #NICAR26 looking at coding agents for data analysis: Databot from Posit (formerly RStudio) is another option. It's an assistant for the Positron IDE specifically designed for data work.
https://posit.co/blog/introducing-databot/
See a demo from September's Posit conference:
https://youtu.be/Ve7cNChzq5Q?si=NeEs2dzr9Vhpigps&t=1618
#RStats #Python

Fun time in Indianapolis this week for #nicar26

Semantra is an open-source tool for searching documents by meaning, not keywords. It aims "to make running a specialized semantic search engine easy, friendly, configurable, and private/secure." Developed by @dylan [NYTimes]
https://github.com/freedmand/semantra
(Needs #Python installed)
#NICAR26

It was so interesting to hear at #NICAR26 how different newsrooms are - and aren't - using AI. The NY Times looks to have a very well thought out approach, always making sure human experts start and review any AI work.
(And they have some amazing internal tools)
#GenAI

1/5 Follow. The. Money. If you missed this #NICAR26 talk I suggest taking a look at these slides as there's a lot of great data out there on government contracts. tinyurl.com/NICAR26-cont...