Items12The creator’s order
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Investigative Reporters Handbook (2020)Published 1 Jan 2020Sixth edition, by Brant Houston and Mark Horvit for Investigative Reporters and Editors (2020)
The closest thing the trade has to a standard reference, and the one to keep on the desk. Its 23 chapters cover data, documents and writing up the finished investigation, along with a wide range of…0 - 2
Story-Based Inquiry: A Manual for Investigative JournalistsFree to download in its original UNESCO edition, and the best single answer to the question of how an investigation actually starts. Mark Lee Hunter and his co-authors treat every story as a hypothesis until it is verified, then build the method out from there: backgrounding, working with human…0 - 3
The Art of access (2010)Published 1 Jan 2010Second edition, by David Cuillier and Charles N. Davis (CQ Press, 2019)
Knowing the public records law is only half the job; this book is about the other half, getting an official to actually hand the records over. Cuillier and Davis treat access as an art that needs an organized approach and an…0 - 4
Data for Journalists (2018)Published 1 Jan 2018Sixth edition, by Brant Houston (Routledge, 2026)
The practical route into data work for a reporter who has never opened a database manager. Houston, a former executive director of Investigative Reporters and Editors who went on to hold the Knight Chair in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at…0 - 5
Numbers in the newsroom (2001)Published 1 Jan 2001Second edition, by Sarah Cohen (Investigative Reporters and Editors, 2014)
The fastest cure for the moment a budget, a crime rate or a poll lands on the desk and the story depends on getting the arithmetic right. Cohen, a former economist at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, covers fractions,…0 - 6
The Data Journalism Handbook How Journalists Can Use Data To Improve News (2012)Published 1 Jan 2012Second edition: Towards a Critical Data Practice, edited by Liliana Bounegru and Jonathan Gray (Amsterdam University Press, 2021)
Free to read online, and the widest view of how data reporting is done around the world: 54 chapters from 74 contributors. It is a collection of perspectives and case…0 - 7
Verification Handbook for Investigative ReportingFree, and the guide for the part of an investigation that now happens online. Edited by Craig Silverman for the European Journalism Centre, it applies verification to long-form work: search and research techniques for online investigations, checking open data before building a story on it,…0 - 8
Precision journalism (1973)Published 1 Jan 1973Fourth edition: A Reporter's Introduction to Social Science Methods, by Philip Meyer (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002)
The oldest book here and still the one that explains why a pattern in the data is or is not evidence. Meyer argued that reporters should borrow the tools of social scientists, and the…0 - 9
Talk to Me (2019)Published 1 Jan 2019The interviewing guide on the list, and the most readable entry. Dean Nelson, who founded the journalism program at Point Loma Nazarene University, argues that good interviews come from careful preparation and good journalistic habits rather than luck, and backs it with case studies of famous…0 - 10
Open Government Guide (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press)The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the PressThe reference to check before filing any request to a state or local agency in the US. The Reporters Committee's guide covers open records and open meetings law in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with each state's outline prepared by volunteer attorneys who are experts in open…0
