Mundane Reality Behind the Myth of the Dashing, Devil-May-Care Super Sleuths

Phillip Knightley, one of the country’s most distinguished investigative journalists, has never gone undercover. For him, investigative reporting involves long, boring hours in libraries, looking things up, tracing people, studying court reports, attending legal conferences, typing up memos and listening to outlandish conspiracy theories: that sort of thing. Here he offers six top tips to an aspiring sleuth

There are lots of myths about investigative journalism. It is thought to be exciting and glamorous. Its practitioners are seen as dashing, devil-may-care reporters who made the leap from suburban courts to “under-cover” work exposing the wrong-doers in our society and obtaining justice for those who had suffered at their hands.

Investigative journalists, so the myth goes, persist when ordinary reporters give up, have flashes of inspiration and insight, persuade reluctant insiders to confide in them and then, at the right moment, confront the guilty men (seldom women) and reveal all.

Written by Phillip Knightley.

Sir Harold Evans On The Failures Of Journalism

Matt Wells spoke to Sir Harold Evans in New York:

As Editor of the Sunday Times, you helped make it distinctive by giving it a strong investigative arm. Do you see that kind of strength in reporting and in news outlets these days? And what thoughts have you about whether the shift towards online journalism creates a pressure against that or limits that in any way?

There has been a reduction in the amount of long-form investigative journalism and that’s a great pity because some stories actually need space to investigate and put the qualifications in, and so I regret that to some extent – to a large extent, in fact. It can be done online, I mean the Daily Beast [edited by Sir Harold’s wife, Tina Brown] does some, but generally speaking the longer forms of journalism are more suitable to print than to the web.

Generally, when we are on the web we are in a hurry. I think they are complementary; you need both.

Written by Matthew Wells – Journalist.