Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Dedication -- 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