Customer Reviews

The Reporter's Handbook: An Investigator's Guide to Documents and Techniques

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This book reads like a text book- so if you need a quick reference guide to background checks I would recommend buying this one in addition to somehting like Dennis King's - Get the Facts on Anyone. I've just started reading it but so far it's very informative.

The Reporter's Handbook is a guidebook full of suggestions on what to look for when investigating public companies, the police, the courts, education, health care, the list goes on. Weinberg attaches practical advice to the phrase "journalists should look for..." followed by specifics.

For example, in the section on investigation non-profits, he goes over IRS form 990 in detail (the non-profit tax return), putting each line in context and explaining when there's a story in the numbers, and when there isn't. When talking about education, he gives ideas on areas of abuse often overlooked by reporters and then explains how to begin investigation using a documents first approach.

The book concludes with a thorough chapter explaining how to put the story together.

It's a must have for any journalist who takes their role as watchdog seriously.

So you wanna be a journalist? Well, you'd probably do better just going out for several hours talking to people than reading this book. But it does have some good ideas, it's just hard to get through the damn thing.

This is certainly and exaustive (and exausting) overview of the field of investigative reporting. It gets a bit tiresome, though, for reporters like myself who don't see the world in the same good journalists vs. bad everyone else way that Weinberg and the IRE croud does. Nevertheless, there are some good ideas that can add punch to a journalist's reporting skills. Not a bad choice if you've run out of better books to read on reporting.

A comprehensive source book for any investigator. This book delves into the controversial world of "investigative journalism" and how far the media will go to get a story. As a law enforcement investigator I am glad to have this informative book on how the media gathers and dispenses their information, it borders on criminal. If law enforcement ever gathered facts like the way this book suggests the media would be all over law enforment demanding someone' head.