The Book
The Universal Journalist contents
1. What Makes A Good Reporter?
Attitudes – Character – A great reporter – Getting the right start
2. The Limitations of Journalism
Owners’ priorities – The journalistic culture – Readers’ values
3. What Is News?
What is news? – News values – News value factors – A sliding scale for stories – Beauty and news values – A word about good news
4. Where Do Good Stories Come From?
The habits of successful reporters– Getting out and about – News editors – Non-obvious sources – Other productive areas – Stories that good reporters avoid
5. Research
What you should be looking for – Where to get it – Researching online – Printed sources – Research as a foreign correspondent
6. Handling Sources, Not Them Handling You
Guidelines for dealing with any source – Official sources – Handling unauthorised sources – Unattributable sources ‘off the record’ – Getting too close to sources
7. Questioning
How to approach people – The most useful questions in journalism – Questioning uneasy sources – Questioning elusive, evasive and hostile sources – Questioning by email – Press conferences – Celebrity interviews
8. Reporting Numbers and Statistics
Questioning data – The uses and abuses of statistics – Averages – Distribution – Percentages – Per head – Surveys – Opinion polls – Correlation – Projections – Real versus apparent rise – Probability – Phoney science
9. Investigative Reporting
What is investigative reporting? – Productive areas to investigate – Investigative reporting skills – How to run investigative operations
10. How To Cover Major Incidents
How to make sure your coverage of a disaster doesn’t turn into one – Death tolls – The death call – All reporters are tough, aren’t they?
11. Mistakes, Corrections and Hoaxes
Mistakes – How should you respond to mistakes? – Great newspaper hoaxes
12. Ethics
General guidelines – Grey areas
13. Writing for Newspapers
Planning – Clarity– Fresh language – Honesty – Precision – Suitability – Efficiency – Fluency – Revision – The joys of writing
14. Intros
How to write sharp intros – Hard news approach – Other approaches – A word about feature intros
15. Construction and Description
Construction guidelines – Analysing story structures – Payoffs – Attribution – Description
16. Handling Quotes
When do you use quotes? – Accuracy – Efficiency – Attributing quotes – Inventing quotes
17. Different Ways To Tell A Story
Different approaches
18. Comment, Intentional and Otherwise
Comment in news stories – The big I – Analysis – Obituaries – Leaders or editorial opinion pieces – Columnists – Reviews
19. How To Be A Great Reporter
Hard work – The application of intelligence – Intellectual courage – Meticulousness – Consuming appetite for books – A good knowledge of journalism’s past – Obsessive nature
