"This handbook offers an insight into a set of investigative practices that will make your first steps into this exciting and demanding discipline, easier. You will find the elements that we consider to be the most important aspects of investigative journalistic work, along with numerous examples and case studies, additional reading material, data and exercises. Although the emphasis is placed on the experiences of journalists from the region, our collaboration with Sheila Coronel, director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University, ensures a wider perspective, tackling all of the basic principles of good investigative work. The book will take you through the very substance of investigative journalism, from the definition of what investigative journalism really is, and what it is not, through the investigative process itself and the set of techniques for following paper and people trails, interviewing and checking the legal implications of your work, and putting the article together. Although the best approach to this handbook is to read these chapters one by one in the order in which they are presented, you can also go directly to the parts that are of particular interest to you - this may be particularly relevant for the chapters that deal with investigative techniques and specific regional practices related to them." (Introduction)