Required Reading

ShareThisHere's a great jumping-off point for working journalists, teachers, students or anyone who wants to build a library of excellent journalism manuals and reference books. This list includes books on topics ranging from ethics to investigative reporting to online journalism, as well as some recommended stylebooks and grammar manuals.


Journalism (General Reading)

The New New Journalism
By Robert Boynton
What came after the era of “new journalists” of the 1960s? The new new journalists, of course, which Boynton examines in his book, which features interviews from such celebrated writers as Michael Lewis, Susan Orlean and William Langewiesche.

Journalism: The Democratic Craft
By G. Stuart Adam and Roy Peter Clark
Both an anthology and a textbook, this guide provides students with a commentary and critique of some of the best of the craft, including George Orwell, John Hersey and Seymour Hersh. The book emphasizes the development of practical skills as well as theoretical skills, and each chapter includes exercises and a study guide.

The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect
By Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel
This book is more focused on theory than practical journalism, with a strong focus on ethics, but is a must-read for anyone who fancies him or herself a journalist. It lays out the core values of journalism, and addresses the issues and difficulties that often accompany the position.

Ethics

Morals and the Media: Ethics in Canadian Journalism
By Nick Russell
This revised edition of this book takes a close look at the ethical issues that have come out of the changing face of Canadian journalism, including the rise of online journalism and blogging and the further concentration of media ownership. Each chapter also includes a “Tough Calls” section, which allows readers to flex their own ethical muscles and decide what they would do in a sticky situation.

The Invention of Journalism Ethics: The Path to Objectivity and Beyond
By Stephen J.A. Ward
This book explores the history of journalism ethics and the changing relationship between the journalist and the audience, and discusses the theory of journalistic objectivity.

Reporting

Asking Questions: The Art of the Media Interview
By Paul McLaughlin
Considered by many to be one of the best books on interviewing out there, this book is unfortunately no longer available (except directly from the author via his website), but if you’re lucky enough to stumble upon it in a used bookstore, pick it up. It’ll be an invaluable resource.

Regret The Error
By Craig Silverman
This book accompanies the popular Regret The Error blog, edited by Craig Silverman, and not only draws attention to the number of errors slipping into newsprint but also questions why so many errors are being made, and what journalists can do to minimize mistakes.

Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Comprehensive Primer
By Fred Vallance-Jones and David McKie
This is a guide to all aspects of computer-assisted reporting and is useful for both print and broadcast journalists.

Investigative Reporting

Digging Deeper: A Canadian Reporter’s Research Guide
By Robert Cribb, David McKie, Dean Jobb and Fred Vallance-Jones
Digging Deeper includes a number of practical tips and guides to researching individuals, companies or institutions and to finding information on the public record in Canada through freedom of information laws. The book also includes instruction on how to prepare for interviews, how to pitch investigative pieces and how to effectively organize all of the information you’ve collected.

Behind the Headlines: A History of Investigative Journalism in Canada
By Cecil Rosner
This book explores this history of investigative reporting in Canada, beginning with the country’s earliest newspapers and going up to the present day.

Writing & Editing

After the Fact: A Guide to Fact-Checking for Magazine and Other Media
By Cynthia Brouse
Making sure everything in a piece is factually correct? Sounds easy enough, right? Wrong. Fact-checking is tough and tedious, and Brouse’s book is the best around to help you navigate those waters. It’s also a quick read, so you could easily polish it off in the morning and be a pro fact-checker by the afternoon.

Line by Line: How to Edit Your Own Writing
By Claire Kehrwald Cook
If there’s anything harder than writing that first draft, it might just be editing it by yourself. Cook provides an excellent guide to improving and polishing your own writing beyond that first attempt.

PWAC Guide to Roughing It In the Market: A Survival Toolkit for the Savvy Writer
By Angie Gallop
Written by more than 20 successful Canadian freelance writers, this book is packed with tips and tricks on making it in the writing business.

The Bigger Picture: Elements of Feature Writing
By Ivor Shapiro
Written by some of the country's top feature writers, The Bigger Picture combines both excellent journalism with practical how-to instruction and because it is written by actual Canadian journalists—including David Hayes, Moira Farr and Philip Preville—it reads like a well-written magazine feature instead of a dry textbook.

On Writing Well
By William Zinsser
Required reading for many, if not most, journalism school students, this is a must-have for any journalist’s bookshelf. Zinsser advises writers to write clearly and concisely, and do away with any showy excess. Zinsser offers advice on topics such as usage, science and technical writing, interviewing and  humour.

Broadcast Journalism

Storytelling with the Camcorder
This guide focuses on both the technical and the creative sides of television reporting.

Writing for CBC Television
The theme of this book is “have something to say and say it simply.”  This is a strictly practical guide for both new and more seasoned TV writers.

Online Journalism

Online News: Journalism and the Internet
By Stuart Allan
This book delves deep into the world of online journalism and discusses the questions that have come about in recent years regarding the new medium. The increase in online news is explored through a number of major events, such as the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, election campaigns, the London bombings and the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Journalism Next: A Practical Guide to Digital Reporting and Publishing
By Mark Briggs
An updated version of Briggs’s popular Journalism 2.0 online guide, this book features a number of practical tips on the latest software, tools and concepts regarding topics like blogging, crowdsourcing and mobile applications.

Flash Journalism: How to Create Multimedia News Packages
By Mindy McAdams
This guide offers valuable tips and resources on packaging a story for the web, including a number of step-by-step examples.

The Digital Journalist’s Handbook
By Mark S. Luckie
Born out of Luckie’s 10,000 Words blog, this book offers tips and tricks on how to thrive in a multimedia environment. The book is fully illustrated (by the author) and includes a glossary with definitions of more than 100 technical terms and phrases.

Style & Grammar

The Canadian Press Stylebook
This reference guide, used by Canada’s national news agency, includes the answer to almost any style question a journalist might have, everything from how to format sports scores to how to abbreviate province and state names.

The Canadian Press Caps and Spelling
The other half of the CP Stylebook, Caps and Spelling is a listing of hundreds of the trickiest words that often trip up journalists.

The Globe and Mail Style Book
The Globe and Mail’s in-house style guide is a useful reference for style and usage.

The Chicago Manual of Style
This century-old style guide (now in its 15th edition) contains answers to any question a writer, editor or publisher might have. Though an American publication, this book is a staple at many Canadian publications.

Canadian Oxford Dictionary
The Canadian Oxford is the standard dictionary reference across Canada and is the official dictionary of The Canadian Press and The Globe and Mail. It’s a great reference for Canadian spellings, slang and terminology. Make sure to invest in the big one (with over 300,000 definitions), not the pocketsize or the student edition.  For quick reference, it’s also available at Oxford Reference Online (though not free, the database is often available free at libraries, and you might be able to access it from home with a library card). 

Canadian Oxford Thesaurus
Like the dictionary, it’s useful to get the full-size thesaurus and not the smaller version.

Canadian Oxford A-Z of Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation
This is a handy, pocket-sized reference for all the nitty-gritty aspects of Canadian English.

Editing Canadian English
By The Editors’ Association of Canada
Another excellent reference guide.

Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing
By Mignon Fogarty
Written as a follow-up to the immensely popular Grammar Girl podcast, this book offers a number of funny and lighthearted tips on the ins and outs of grammar. Many of Fogarty’s tips are also available online in both written and podcast form for quick (and free) reference.

Woe Is I
By Patricia T. O’Conner
This grammar guide is written in such a witty and carefree manner that it makes learning about the classroom’s driest subject, grammar, enjoyable—and even fun! O’Conner explains complicated concepts clearly and uses easy-to-remember examples in her instruction.

The Elements of Style
By William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
This book, now in its fourth edition, is the definitive guide to the English language, including about 100 pages of tips on the uses and misuses of common words and phrases.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves
By Lynne Truss
This is the book that took the world, and The New York Times bestseller list, by storm and made everyone crazy about punctuation. No easy feat. Truss’s book is witty and informative, and just a good read whether or not you have a passion for punctuation.

(Note: While excellent, the above four references (Fogarty, O’Conner, and Strunk and White and Truss) are American, not Canadian, so some of the spellings and practices may differ from Canadian norms.)

Great Journalism

Cabin Fever
By Moira Farr and Ian Pearson
The best way to learn about great writing is to read great writing, so why not start with the newest collection of creative non-fiction to come out of the Literary Journalism Program at the Banff Centre. The book includes pieces from Jeff Warren, Charlotte Gill and Jeremy Klaszus, among others.

The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism
By Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda
This almost-600-page text includes the some of the greatest literary non-fiction ever written and spans nearly 400 years. The book includes works from everyone from Daniel Defoe to Walt Whitman to Hunter S. Thompson.