Why It’s Relevant

Journalism students today face an uncertain future. Newspapers are going out of business while everybody with a web-browser has the power to publish stories and reach a global audience (myself included). While we may be unsure of what is ahead for professional journalists, one thing we cannot forget is the reason why a strong and free press is necessary: to act as a watchdog of democracy and disclose what those in power do not want to be known.

Review

The Reporter’s Handbook is a guide for those who want to get more information than is provided at the news conference, press release, or school board meeting. Weinberg shows how to go about investigating everything from the Executive branch down to your local charity organization. The chapters are well organized making this book an excellent reference.

This book does not give you a step-by-step process of what you should do. Instead, Weinberg discusses various issues and provides the reader with questions and story ideas. Almost every section includes examples of real-life cases and the documents and techniques the reporter relied on to get the story.

Documents are a critical part of this book. In the first chapter Weinberg introduces the theories of “working from the outside in” and having a “documents state of mind.” He shows how to use secondary sources (such as newspapers, newsletters, books, and transcripts) for leads to primary sources. The “working from the outside in” theory was perhaps best described by Deep Throat in All The President’s Men:

A conspiracy like this … a conspiracy investigation … the rope has to tighten slowly around everyone’s neck. You build convincingly from the outer edges in … If you shoot too high and miss, then everybody feels more secure. Lawyers work this way. I’m sure smart reporters must, too.

Weinberg does a great job of not only describing the documents a reporters needs to look at, but also why he should be looking in the first place. The book is full of example such as this one:

If a charity uses volunteer fund-raisers, their labor is free. When a charity has decided against using volunteers, journalists should ask why.

The author then goes on to explain how a lot of charity donations end up in the pockets of the companies that are hired to solicit them from the public and how a reporter can go about investigating this issue.

The last two chapters of the book deal with putting the whole story together and checking for accuracy and ethical issues.

My Take

This book is one of my personal favorites. I would like to see a new edition since this book is about 13 years old now; a lot has changed since 1996. What has not changed, however, is the principles and issues that Weinberg wrote about. Every chapter gives me countless story ideas. The chapter about investigating education has given me at least a dozen possible stories to look into next semester on the college newspaper. I would recommend this book to any journalism student, reporter, or blogger who wants to spend time doing the hard work of gathering the facts and uncovering the truth.