"A collection of startling stories from celebrated authors and fresh new voices alike, Submersion Journalism serves as a proclamation in favor of unsanctioned reporting in an age of managed "news" and PR spin. The book is a defense of the radically first-person dispatch, filed from exactly those points of view where a reporter is not supposed to be."--BOOK JACKET.

Over three and a half decades, Ted Conover has ridden the rails with hoboes, crossed the border with Mexican immigrants, guarded prisoners in Sing Sing, and inspected meat for the USDA. His books and articles chronicling these experiences, including the award-winning Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing, have made him one of the premier practitioners of immersion reporting. In immersion reporting—a literary cousin to ethnography, travel writing, and memoir—the writer fully steps into a new world or culture, participating in its trials, rites, and rituals as a member of the group. The end results of these firsthand experiences are familiar to us from bestsellers such as Nickel and Dimed and Behind the Beautiful Forevers. But in a world of wary strangers, where does one begin? Conover distills decades of knowledge into an accessible resource aimed at writers of all levels. He covers how to “get into” a community, how to conduct oneself once inside, and how to shape and structure the stories that emerge. Conover is also forthright about the ethics and consequences of immersion reporting, preparing writers for the surprises that often surface when their piece becomes public. Throughout, Conover shares anecdotes from his own experiences as well as from other well-known writers in this genre, including Alex Kotlowitz, Anne Fadiman, and Sebastian Junger. It’s a deep-in-the-trenches book that all aspiring immersion writers should have in hand as they take that first leap into another world.

In her provocative book, Brooke Kroeger argues for a reconsideration of the place of oft-maligned journalistic practices. While it may seem paradoxical, much of the valuable journalism in the past century and a half has emerged from undercover investigations that employed subterfuge or deception to expose wrong. Kroeger asserts that undercover work is not a separate world, but rather it embodies a central discipline of good reporting—the ability to extract significant information or to create indelible, real-time descriptions of hard-to-penetrate institutions or social situations that deserve the public’s attention. Together with a companion website that gathers some of the best investigative work of the past century, Undercover Reporting serves as a rallying call for an endangered aspect of the journalistic endeavor.

This book gives readers the confidence they need to handle any investigative reporting assignment and to produce demonstrated results. Its step-by-step progression covering the entire investigative process will help them stay on track to complete stories of any size. The book answers relevant questions such as "Where can I find a story?" "What do I do when a source won't talk?" "How can I find the right documents to support my story?" "How can I present this story online?" and "How can a spreadsheet keep it all from falling apart?" Investigative Reporting contains full stories and timely examples from both professional and student reporters. Each chapter concludes with sequential "Big Story" assignments to help readers research, write and publish their own investigative stories. Web links to online resources (including public records information, computer-assisted reporting techniques and interactive investigative story examples) will help readers move smoothly and successfully through an investigative story or team reporting project, whether for print, broadcast or the Web.

ON POWER They do have tremendous power. But in part it is because we give it to them. We are nothing, but we are not alone. Awe cannot live in fear. The moment you stop caring about what the media establishment thinks of you, is the moment you become truly free. ON INSIDERS The USPS whistleblower, a Marine Corps combat veteran said, “I would rather be back in Afghanistan, getting shot at by Afghans, honest to God,” than be interrogated by federal agent Russell Strasser—who coerced him by saying, “I am trying to twist you a little bit because your mind will kick in…. I am not scaring you, but I am scaring you.” ON PRIVACY The right to record is closely tied to the right to speak or even to take contemporaneous notes about what one sees and hears. As 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt quipped, “People committing malfeasance don’t have any right to privacy…. What are we saying—that Upton Sinclair shouldn’t have smuggled his pencil in?” ON MEANS & ENDS Whereas the novelist Ernest Hemingway said, “What is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after,” Thomas B. Morgan of the 1960s New Journalism contends, “Morally defensible journalism is rarely what you feel good about afterward; it is only that which makes you feel better than you would otherwise.” ON LITIGATION “Polling does not decide the truth nor speak to evidence…. The New York Times have not met their burden to prove that Veritas is deceptive…claiming protections from an upstart competitor armed with a cell phone and a website. There is a substantial basis in law to proceed, to permit Project Veritas, to conduct discovery into The New York Times.” —Project Veritas v. New York Times Company; New York Supreme Court, March 18, 2021

At a time when the media’s relation to power is at the forefront of political discussion, this book considers how journalists can affect public discourse on politics, economy and society at large. From well-known and respected authors providing all new material, Making Journalists considers journalism education, training, practice and professionalism across a wide range of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Africa, India, USA and the UK. The book offers insights into: what journalism is how education makes the journalist and, therefore, the news models of journalism taught and practised across the globe the ethical implications of the process. When news reporting can lead to decisions on whether or not to got to war, everything can be affected by journalists and their mediation of the world. This text brings these present issues together in one invaluable resource for all students of journalism, politics and media studies.

A stunning investigation of the life and legend of Mexican kingpin Joaquín Archivaldo “El Chapo” Guzmán Loera, building on Noah Hurowitz’s revelatory coverage for Rolling Stone of El Chapo’s federal drug-trafficking trial. This is the true story of how El Chapo built the world’s wealthiest and most powerful drug-trafficking operation, based on months’ worth of trial testimony and dozens of interviews with cartel gunmen, Mexican journalists and political figures, Chapo’s family members, and the DEA agents who brought him down. Over the course of three decades, El Chapo was responsible for smuggling hundreds of tons of cocaine, marijuana, heroin, meth, and fentanyl around the world, becoming in the process the most celebrated and reviled drug lord since Pablo Escobar. El Chapo waged ruthless wars against his rivals and former allies, plunging vast areas of Mexico into unprecedented levels of violence, even as many in his home state of Sinaloa continued to view him as a hero. This unputdownable book, written by a great new talent, brings El Chapo’s exploits into a focus that previous profiles have failed to capture. Hurowitz digs in deep beyond the legends and delves into El Chapo’s life and legacy—not just the hunt for him, revealing some of the most dramatic and often horrifying moments of his notorious career, including the infamous prison escapes, brutal murders, multi-million-dollar government payoffs, and the paranoia and narcissism that led to his downfall. From the evolution of organized crime in Mexico to the militarization of the drug war to the devastation wrought on both sides of the border by the introduction of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, this book is a gripping and comprehensive work of investigative, on-the-ground reporting.