Until you’ve consumed all of the best Investigative Journalism books, can you even claim to be a true fan?
- Open Source Intelligence Techniques: Resources for Searching and Analyzing Online Information (2018)
- Investigative Reporter’s Handbook: A Guide to Documents, Databases, and Techniques (2008)
- How to Find Out Anything: From Extreme Google Searches to Scouring Government Documents, a Guide to Uncovering Anything About Everyone and Everything (2012)
- Investigative Journalism: Proven Strategies for Reporting the Story (2007)
- The Elements of Journalism, Revised and Updated 3rd Edition: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (2014)
- Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University (2007)
- Investigative Reporting (2018)
- Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism from Around the World (2014)
- The Science Writers’ Investigative Reporting Handbook: A Beginner’s Guide to Investigations (2018)
- Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Journalism (2018)
- Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World (2005)
- Practical SQL: A Beginner’s Guide to Storytelling with Data (2018)
- Nellie Bly and Investigative Journalism for Kids: Mighty Muckrakers from the Golden Age to Today, with 21 Activities (For Kids series) (2015)
- The Anonymous Source (An Alex Vane Media Thriller) (Volume 1) (2016)
- War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence (2019)
Open Source Intelligence Techniques: Resources for Searching and Analyzing Online Information (2018)
Completely Rewritten Sixth Edition Sheds New Light on Open Source Intelligence Collection and Analysis Author Michael Bazzell has been well known in government circles for his ability to locate personal information about any target through Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). In this book, he shares his methods in great detail.
Investigative Reporter’s Handbook: A Guide to Documents, Databases, and Techniques (2008)
Learn how to use fundamental news reporting and writing skills, from gathering sources and tracking information, to interviewing and pursuing investigative stories on a variety of beats with the Investigative Reporter’s Handbook.
How to Find Out Anything: From Extreme Google Searches to Scouring Government Documents, a Guide to Uncovering Anything About Everyone and Everything (2012)
In How to Find Out Anything, master researcher Don MacLeod explains how to find what you’re looking for quickly, efficiently, and accurately—and how to avoid the most common mistakes of the Google Age. Not your average research book, How to Find Out Anything shows you how to unveil nearly anything about anyone. From top CEO’s salaries to police records, you’ll learn little-known tricks for discovering the exact information you’re looking for.
Investigative Journalism: Proven Strategies for Reporting the Story (2007)
Investigative Journalism is a “how-to” primer for beginning investigative journalists. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter William C. Gaines uses a unique case-study method to teach readers what investigative reporting is, why it is im
The Elements of Journalism, Revised and Updated 3rd Edition: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect (2014)
Seventeen years ago, the Committee of Concerned Journalists gathered some of America’s most influential newspeople to ask the question, “What is journalism for?” Through exhaustive research, surveys, interviews, and public forums, they identified the essential elements that define journalism and its role in our society.
Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University (2007)
The country’s most prominent journalists and nonfiction authors gather each year at Harvard’s Nieman Conference on Narrative Journalism. Telling True Stories presents their best advice—covering everything from finding a good topic, to structuring narrative stories, to writing and selling your first book.
Investigative Reporting (2018)
Investigative Reporting provides a step-by-step approach for tackling any investigative story, teaching reporters the skills they need to overcome common obstacles during investigative work. Experienced reporter and instructor, Marcy Burstiner offers readers guidance on how to identify story ideas, craft a premise, seek out human sources and documents, file public records requests, and analyze data.
Global Muckraking: 100 Years of Investigative Journalism from Around the World (2014)
Crusading journalists from Sinclair Lewis to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein have played a central role in American politics: checking abuses of power, revealing corporate misdeeds, and exposing government corruption. Muckraking journalism is part and parcel of American democracy.
The Science Writers’ Investigative Reporting Handbook: A Beginner’s Guide to Investigations (2018)
"The Science Writers' Investigative Reporting Handbook: A Beginner's Guide to Investigations" is a practical, step-by-step guide that gives writers all the tools they'll need to add accountability reporting to their stories. In a concise, easy-to-follow format, it lays out strategies and resources designed to empower beginners to launch science-based investigations.
Democracy’s Detectives: The Economics of Investigative Journalism (2018)
Winner of the Goldsmith Book Prize, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government Winner of the Tankard Book Award, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass CommunicationWinner of the Frank Luther Mott–Kappa Tau Alpha Journalism & Mass Communication Research Award In democratic socie…
Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World (2005)
Prison scandals, terrorism, corporate fraud, election rigging—most likely you have heard something of the sort in the last ten minutes. But what is truth and what is part of the great “washout” of biased reporting? A celebration of lucid investigative reporting, selected by titan of the craft John Pilger, could come at no better moment.
Practical SQL: A Beginner’s Guide to Storytelling with Data (2018)
Practical SQL is an approachable and fast-paced guide to SQL (Structured Query Language), the standard programming language for defining, organizing, and exploring data in relational databases. The book focuses on using SQL to find the story your data tells, with the popular open-source database PostgreSQL and the pgAdmin interface as its primary tools.
Nellie Bly and Investigative Journalism for Kids: Mighty Muckrakers from the Golden Age to Today, with 21 Activities (For Kids series) (2015)
In the late 1800s, the daring young reporter Elizabeth Cochrane—known by the pen name Nellie Bly—faked insanity so she could be committed to a mental institution and secretly report on the awful conditions there.
The Anonymous Source (An Alex Vane Media Thriller) (Volume 1) (2016)
It's one year after the 9/11 attacks and court reporter Alex Vane is fighting to break into the flashy world of TV news. But when he uncovers the scoop of a lifetime, his tightly-controlled world is rocked: his editor buries his story, a source turns up dead, and Alex finds himself at the center of a violent media conspiracy.As he receives tips from a mysterious source, Alex enlists the help of a captivating professor, Camila Gray.
War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence (2019)
A harrowing exploration of the collapse of American diplomacy and the abdication of global leadership, by the winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service.US foreign policy is undergoing a dire transformation, forever changing America’s place in the world. Institutions of diplomacy and development are bleeding out after deep budget cuts; the diplomats who make America’s deals and protect its citizens around the world are walking out in droves.
Best Investigative Journalism Books Worth Your Attention
We highly recommend you to buy all paper or e-books in a legal way, for example, on Amazon. But sometimes it might be a need to dig deeper beyond the shiny book cover. Before making a purchase, you can visit resources like Library Genesis and download some investigative journalism books mentioned below at your own risk. Once again, we do not host any illegal or copyrighted files, but simply give our visitors a choice and hope they will make a wise decision.
Disrupting Investigative Journalism: Moment of Death or Dramatic Rebirth?
Author(s): Amanda Gearing
ID: 3011740, Publisher: Routledge, Year: 2021, Size: 2 Mb, Format: pdf
Investigative Journalism
Author(s): Hugo de Burgh and Paul Lashmar
ID: 3012102, Publisher: Routledge, Year: 2021, Size: 2 Mb, Format: pdf
CIA Torture Unredacted - An Investigation into the CIA torture programme
Author(s): Sam Raphael; Crofton Black; Ruth Blakeley
ID: 2389062, Publisher: The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Year: 2019, Size: 19 Mb, Format: pdf
Please note that this booklist is not final. Some books are truly chart-busters according to Chicago Tribune, others are composed by unknown writers. On top of that, you can always find additional tutorials and courses on Coursera, Udemy or edX, for example. Are there any other relevant books you could recommend? Leave a comment if you have any feedback on the list.