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Tip sheets from Investigative Reporters and Editors: 

• ****Grimaldi, James: "Follow the money trail in politics"

  Grimaldi lists numerous online resources for campaign finance and lobbying stories and explains how to most successfully utilize FOIA. His tipsheet offers both strategic and tactical advise for money trail stories, from the big questions to the little details.  NB: Extremely rich resource.

   

• Guckian, Kelly: "Analyzing Campaign Data"

  Guckian gives guidelines to follow when reporting on elections, campaigns, etc. She provides useful information on filing periods and deadlines, federal laws that limit campaign gifts, Texas laws on the subject, places to find the data and common problems with data analysis, and more.

   

• Keating, Dan: "Keeping [Local] Government Accountable

  Keating discusses how to report on government expenditures. The tipsheet is broken down into sections: what sort of data to use, what questions to ask, how to put the two parts together.

   

Excel Tip sheets (various sources)

• EXCELTIP.com  http://www.exceltip.com/category.html

  "Excel tips by category" is especially helpful.  Much of the info is free; the author is using this to promote his books, which are also quite good.

   

• Microsoft Excel 2007: Advanced Topics (.DOC file.  Source: San Francisco State University)

  Course assumes familiarity with basic computer terminology, experience with Excel and the ability to effectively work in the Windows PC environment.  Topics include: Importing; Autofilter; Tables; Proofing; Create a chart; Chart location and type; Chart Layout; Chart style; Chart source data; chart class challenge; Trim function; Paste special and Text-to-Columns; Create a Pivot Table; Protecting your work.

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