The Canon - American Media Institute American Media Institute

The Canon

The Canon

Writers must first be readers. Reading the classics of our craft is the best way to master it. Selected recommendations of journalist excellence and works by our writing team are listed below for your consideration.

On Writing Well

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Katherine Boo
Bird by Bird

Anne Lamott
In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction

Lee Gutkind and Annie Dillard
On Writing

Stephen King
On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction

William Zinsser
On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft

Stephen King
Rules for Writers

Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers
Stolen Words: Forays Into the Origins and Ravages of Plagiarism

Thomas Mallon
Story Craft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction

Jack Hart
The Art and Craft of Feature Writing: Based on the Wall Street Journal Guide

William E. Blundell
The Art of Column Writing: Insider Secrets from Art Buchwald, Dave Barry, Arianna Huffington, Pete Hamill and Other Great Columnists

Suzette Martinez Standring
The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well

Paula LaRocque
The Essential Don Murray: Lessons from America’s Greatest Writing Teacher

Donald Murray and Lisa Miller
The Paris Review Interviews, I

The Paris Review and Philip Gourevitch
Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular

L. Rust Hills
Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer

Roy Peter Clark
You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Complete Guide to Writing Creative Nonfiction – From Memoir to Literary Journalism and Everything in Between

Lee Gutkind

Style and Grammar

Associated Press Guide to News Writing: The Resource for Professional Journalists

René J. Cappon
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Lynne Truss
Elements of Grammar

Margaret Shertzer
Good writing: An informal manual of style

Alan H. Vrooman
Lapsing Into a Comma: A Curmudgeon’s Guide to the Many Things That Can Go Wrong In Print—And How to Avoid Them

Bill Walsh
The Associated Press Guide to Punctuation

Rene J. Cappon
The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law

Associated Press
The Elements of Style

William Strunk Jr.
The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage

Allan M. Siegal
Words Into Type

Marjorie E. Skillin and Robert M. Gay

Reporting Skills

Advanced Reporting: Essential Skills for 21st Century Journalism

Miles Maguire
Bad News and Good Judgement: A Guide to Reporting on Sensitive Issues in a Small-Town Newspaper

Jim Pumarlo
Best Newspaper Writing

Tom Huang and Steve Myers
Follow the Story: How To Write Successful Nonfiction

James B. Stewart
Inside Reporting: A Practical Guide to the Craft of Journalism

Tim Harrower
Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday Life

Walt Harrington
Journalism: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How

James G. Stovall
Journalistic Writing: Building the Skills, Honing the Craft

Robert M. Knight
Reporting for Journalists

Chris Frost
Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writer’s Guide from the Neiman Foundation at Harvard University

Mark Kramer and Wendy Call
The Elements of Journalism

Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel
The “New” New Journalism: Conversations with Nonfiction Writers About Their Craft

Robert Boynton
Writing and Reporting News

Carole Rich
Writing to Deadline: The Journalist at Work

Donald Murray

Investigative Journalism

A Citizen’s Guide on Using The Freedom of Information Act and The Privacy Act

Congressional Committee
Get the Facts on Anyone, 3rd Edition

Arco
How to Find Out Anything: From Extreme Google Searches to Scouring Government Documents, A Guide to Uncovering Anything About Everyone and Everything

Don MacLeod
Investigative Journalism: Proven Strategies for Reporting the Story

William C Gaines
Investigative Reporter’s Handbook: A Guide to Documents, Databases, and Techniques

Brant Houston and Inc. Investigative Reporters and Editors
Muckraking!: The Journalism That Changed America

Judith Serrin and William Serrin
Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism That Changed the World

John Pilger
The Art of Access: Strategies for Acquiring Public Records

David Cuillier and Charles Davis
The Extreme Searcher’s Internet Handbook: A Guide for the Serious Searcher

Randolph Hock

Freelance Journalism

Six-Figure Freelancing: The Writer’s Guide to Making More Money

Kelly James-Enger
Writer for Hire: 101 Secrets to Freelance Success

Kelly James-Enger

Broadcast Journalism

30 Seconds to Air: A Field Reporter’s Guide to Live Television Reporting

Bob Arya and Bill Kurtis
Broadcast News Handbook: Writing, Reporting & Producing in a Converging Media World

C. A. Tuggle and Forrest Carr
Reality Radio: Telling True Stories in Sound

John Biewen and Alexa Dilworth
Sound Reporting: The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production

Jonathan Kern
Sundays at Eight: 25 Years of Stories from CSPAN’s Q & A and BookNotes

Brian Lamb and C-SPAN
This Business of Television

Howard J. Blumenthal and Oliver R. Goodenough

Online Journalism

An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths

Glenn Reynolds
Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide

Henry Jenkins
Online Journalism: Principles and Practices of News for the Web

James C. Foust
The Complete Guide to Article Writing: How to Write Successful Articles for Online and Print Markets

Naveed Saleh
The Revolution Will Be Digitized

Heather Brooke
WordPress for Dummies, 5th Edition

Lisa Sabin-Wilson

Data Journalism

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work and Think

Viktor Mayer-Schönberger and Kenneth Cukier
The Data Journalism Handbook

Jonathan Gray and Lucy Chambers

First Amendment and Media Law

The Law of Journalism and Mass Communication

Robert Trager and Joseph Russoman

The Business of Journalism

All the News That’s Fit to Sell: How the Market Transforms Information into News

James T. Hamilton
At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf

Bennett Cerf and Christopher Cerf
Citizen Hearst

W. A. Swanberg
Covering America: A Narrative History of a Nation’s Journalism

Christopher Daly
Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media

Eric Klinenberg
Killing Fairfax: Packer, Murdoch and the Ultimate Revenge

Pamela Williams
Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism

Richard J. Tofel
Success Story: The life and times of S. S. McClure

Peter Lyon
The Associated Press Stylebook 2014

Darrell Christian and Paula Froke
The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Creation of the Media

Paul Starr
The Death and Life of American Journalism

Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols
The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times

Gay Talese
The Middle Man: The Adventures of a Literary Agent

Paul R. Reynolds
The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times

Susan E. Tifft and Alex S. Jones
Three Blind Mice

Ken Auletta
What are Journalists For?

Jay Rosen

Classics of the Craft

1001 Afternoons in Chicago

Ben Hecht and Herman Rosse
A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing

H.L. Mencken
A Writer’s Life

Gay Talese
All The President’s Men

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt

Daniel Rasmussen
An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Volume I

Rick Atkinson
An Intimate History of Humanity

Theodore Zeldin
Are We Rome?

Cullen Murphy
Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

Katherine Boo
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Timothy Snyder
Danse Macabre

Stephen King
Den of Thieves

James B. Stewart
Desert Solitaire

Edward Abbey
Dispatches

Michael Herr
Division Street

Studs Terkel
Emus Loose in Engar: Big Stories from Small Towns

Judy Muller
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72

Hunter S. Thompson
For the Record

Felix Morley
Foreign Correspondent: A Memoir

H. D. S. Greenway
Friday Night Lights

H.G. Bissinger
Genius

James Gleick
H.L. Mencken’s Smart Set Criticism

H. L. Mencken and William H. Nolte
Hiroshima

John Hersey
Homage to Catalonia

George Orwell
How the Good Guys Finally Won

Jimmy Breslin
If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade: An Essential Memoir of a Lunatic Decade

Warren Hinckle
In Cold Blood

Truman Capote
Lincoln

David Herbert Donald
Lords of Finance

Liaquat Ahamed
Newspaper Days: Mencken’s Autobiography

Henry Louis Mencken
Open Letters: Selective Writings, 1965-1990

Vaclev Havel
Point of Departure

James Cameron and Andrew Marr
Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number

Jacobo Timerman and Toby Talbot
Pulitzer Prize Feature Stories: America’s Best Writing, 1979-2003

David Garlock
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

Tom Wolfe
Roughing It

Mark Twain and Elizabeth Frank
Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting

Robert McKee
The Age of the Avant-Garde

Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball
The Berlin Diary

William L. Shirer and Gordon A. Craig
The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, Volume II: My Country Right or Left

George Orwell & Sonia Orwell
The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood

David Simon and Edward Burns
The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944, Volume II

Rick Atkinson
The Devil’s Highway

Luis Alberto Urrea
The Emperor

Ryszard Kapuscinski and William R. Brand
The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, Volume III

Rick Atkinson
The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus

Richard Preston
The John McPhee Reader

John McPhee and William L. Howarth
The Journalist and the Murderer

Janet Malcolm
The Laramie Project

et al. Kaufman Moises
The Promised Land

Nicholas Lemann
The Right Stuff

Tom Wolfe
The Rings of Saturn

W. G. Sebald and Michael Hulse
The Soloist

Steve Lopez
The Song of the Dodo

David Quammen
The Strategic President

George C. Edwards
The Unconquerable World

Jonathan Schell
The Vintage Mencken

H.L. Mencken and Alistair Cooke
The Warmth of Other Suns

Isabel Wilkerson
There Are No Children Here

Alex Kotlowitz
Tides of Consent

James A. Stimson
Twilight

Anna Deavere Smith
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Laura Hillenbrand
Understanding Comics

Scott McCloud
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

Philip Gourevitch

On Writing Well Style and Grammar Reporting Skills Investigative Journalism Freelance Journalism Broadcast Journalism Online Journalism Data Journalism First Amendment and Media Law The Business of Journalism Classics of the Craft

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