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Investigative journalism is an invaluable tool for any journalist, but moving into a new field can be tricky - it requires a different mindset entirely to other forms of journalism, focused not on covering events but on uncovering what powerful people or institutions want to keep hidden and serving the public interest.

This three-week online course, led by award-winning investigative journalist Dickon Hooper, will teach the skills needed for existing journalists to build on their knowledge and start working in investigative journalism over its weekly sessions, covering the foundational skills required before taking you through developing an investigative story of your own.

From source management and legal considerations to how to make an impact with your work and get it out to the wider world, you’ll cover the latest tools and techniques for the job with the emphasis on practical learning that all Journalism.co.uk courses bring to the table.

Preparation

Participants will need to bring an investigative story or idea to the first session

Structure

Week One:

  • Fundamentals of investigative journalism - public interest and the particular vs. the systemic
  • Sources and source management, from documents and FOI to online research and shoe-leather journalism
  • Collaboration and impact
  • Evidence corroboration and avoiding confirmation bias

Week Two:

  • The legal side: rights of reply, how to find a good lawyer and how to deal with getting sued
  • Budgeting basics
  • How to put together a pitch and deliver it to the right person at the right time

Week Three:

  • Going over your stories and pitches - Q&A and ideas development

Getting there

This is an online course taking place on Zoom. There will be three sessions, each running from 9am to 11am GMT, each Monday starting on the 10th February


About Dickon Hooper

Dickon has more than 20 years' experience as a journalist, continuing to this day with the BBC. For the last decade of his career, he worked as an investigative Producer for BBC Panorama, The Big Cases, Victoria Derbyshire and Inside Out, winning a number of awards from the Royal Television Society. He continues to work as a journalist/producer, an investigative consultant and teaches investigative journalism to under and post-graduates at universities across the south west.