The Science Writers' Investigative Reporting Handbook: A Beginner's Guide to Investigations - Paperback

by Liza Gross (Author)

"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. It draws on the experience and insights of teachers and practicing journalists alike to illuminate the fundamental principles of investigative reporting, offering tips on cultivating sources, choosing an investigation, working with data, organizing materials, interviewing subjects and bulletproofing stories to avoid legal and ethical pitfalls. Real-world examples demonstrate the responsibility that comes with going beyond showing how science works to revealing how it is used and, too often, abused to the public's detriment. And, at a time when the need for science-savvy reporters has arguably never been greater, "The Science Writers' Investigative Reporting Handbook" makes a compelling case for why journalists should cover science with the same skepticism they would bring to any other human endeavor.

Pulitzer Prize-winning science journalist Deborah Blum calls it "not only a guide to good reporting - it's a compelling treatise on why it matters so much."

This book is part of a series of handbooks: "The Science Writers' Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Pitch, Publish, and Prosper in the Digital Age," which the author contributed to, and "The Science Writers' Essay Handbook."

Read more about the series at PitchPublishProsper.com

Author Biography

Liza Gross is an independent journalist whose investigative reporting has appeared in The Nation, The Intercept, Reveal (from the Center for Investigative Reporting), The Verge and other outlets, and who has written freelance stories for The New York Times and The Washington Post. She's also a contributor to "The Science Writers' Handbook" and a reporter for the Food and Environment Reporting Network, an independent, nonprofit news organization that produces award-winning, high-impact investigative and explanatory reporting on food, agriculture and environmental health. Her investigations - which have examined issues including unchecked violence in psychiatric hospitals, industry bias in "sound science" groups, government failures to protect Latino children from pesticides and vaping advocates' hidden ties to the tobacco industry - have received national awards and recognition in the 2016 "Best American Science and Nature Writing" anthology.