I spent Friday at an all-day conference hosted by Investigative Reporters and Editors organization. Unlike many conferences, where the final speaker cannot come soon enough, this conference ended too soon. The 50 or so people got all sorts of tips help dig deeper in stories and learn from the best.

I found these speakers very encouraging:

• T. Christian Miller, ProPublica: He had an interesting take on FOIA requests, along with how to organize complicated stories.
• Tisha Thompson, Fox5 News, Washington, D.C.: She talked about her love of documents to make stories stand out from competitors.
• Alison Young, USA Today: The former Atlanta reporter, she talked about working hard to get interviews by working from outside the circle of decision makers for a story to gather more information before approaching folks on the inside.

I’ll be posting more links from the conference in the days ahead. I want to figure out how I can use the ideas for The Jefferson Park Hub.