I'm going to be doing some lecturing at the University of the West of England this year to first year students on the BA Journalism course.
Below is a list of books, of which the students are expected to read at least one in the first term and review. (There are other, practical, books on the syllabus as well)
Personally I found former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee's autobiography A Good Life very instructive (if not the most sympathetic to union members) and is often overlooked.
When I started out the three books which really inspired me were Michael Herr's Dispatches, Edward Behr's Anyone Here Been Raped And Speak English? and Pilger's Heroes (just seeing the cover again is so evocative).
Foreign reporting (and all those Vietnam movies) seemed to similary inspire a lot of my peers. I guess books such as Ravi Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City perform the same function today. Something's got to be motivating aspiring journalists because I'm not sure you can write a ripping yarn about blogging (made some coffee, scanned the feeds, rang someone, fed the cat, wrote a post).
What inspires me now are those books which dig out the stories closer to home - getting down and dirty not swanning round Westrminster. Dark Heart by Nick Davies, which is on the list below, is a prime example.
A journalist friend (where are you now David Northmore?) once gave me a copy of The New Journalism by Tom Wolfe and Edward Johnson. It was once groundbreaking and I still like it - but it seems to have fallen out of favour.
(Meanwhile thanks to Roy Greenslade for the tip about a new website for local and regional journalists. I'll be adding that to my resource list for the students).
Kate Adie
The Kindness of Strangers,
Corsets to Camouflage: Women
and War
Nobody's Child
Into
Danger: Risking your life for your work
George Alagiah
A Passage to Africa
A Home from Home: From immigrant boy
to English man
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Some of my best friends are…
Lynn Barber
Mostly Men
Demon Barber
Nick
Davies
Dark Heart
Murder on
Ward Four
White Lies
Flat Earth
News
Thomas Harding
The Video Activist Handbook
Emily O'Reilly
Veronica Guerin: The Life and
Death of a Crime Reporter.
John Pilger
The New Rulers of the World
Tell Me No Lies: Investigative
journalism and its triumphs
Freedom Next Time
Tim Gopsill and Greg Neale
Journalists: 100 years of the NUJ
Chris Horrrie & Adam
Nathan
L?ve TV: Telly Brats & Topless
Darts
Feargal Keane
Season
of Blood: A Rwandan Journey
David Loyn
Frontline:
The British mavericks who changed the face of war reporting
Andrew Marr
My Trade: A short history of British
journalism
Angela Phillips:
Good Writing for Journalists
Anna
Politkovskaya
A Dirty
War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya
Putin's Russia
John Simpson
Strange Places, Questionable People
A Mad World, My Masters
News from No Man’s Land: Reporting
the world
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