Story-Based Inquiry: A Manual for Investigative Journalists

Free 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 sources, setting the project up to succeed, writing, quality control and publishing. The chapters on organization and quality control are the ones most reporters skip and most need. First published with UNESCO in 2009 and translated into more than ten languages, it was substantially updated in a 2025 edition, which is the one to look for.