The Journalist's Resource

03/28/2025

San Francisco Chronicle investigative reporters Jennifer Gollan and Susie Neilson share tips for building a national database from scratch, interviewing trauma survivors, negotiating with public records officials and more.

San Francisco Chronicle reporters Jennifer Gollan and Susie Neilson share tips from their investigation into deadly police chases.

03/28/2025

Knowing what a nationally representative sample is — and isn't — will help you avoid errors in covering clinical trials, opinion polls and other research.

This tip sheet explains what a nationally representative sample is and why journalists need to scrutinize research samples.

03/27/2025

This tip sheet, last updated in May 2024, briefs journalists on basic gun facts and terminology. We created it to help newsrooms avoid some of the most common errors in news stories about fi****ms, especially AR-15-style rifles.

We teamed up with two journalists who know a lot about guns to create a tip sheet to help journalists avoid errors when reporting on fi****ms.

03/26/2025

Reporter Shoshana Walter shares tips on using confidential child welfare records and interviewing traumatized parents.

A behind-the-scenes look at a Marshall Project series that reveals that hospitals drug tested pregnant patients and reported false positives to authorities.

03/25/2025

🧠 Self-care tips for journalists — and where to find support

Published in July 2021, this resource roundup offers practical strategies and tools to help journalists manage stress, burnout, and trauma exposure.

📌 3 quick takeaways for journalists:
- Self-care isn’t selfish—it’s key to sustaining a long-term career in journalism.
- Stress can show up in subtle ways, including irritability, exhaustion, or detachment.
- There are free, journalism-specific resources available for mental health support and peer connection.

📝 3 reporting tips:
1. Recognize signs of burnout: Take note of emotional and physical cues that it might be time to pause.
2. Build in recovery time: Make rest and decompression part of your reporting process, especially after difficult assignments.
3. Stay connected: Reach out to trusted colleagues or professional networks when the work starts to feel isolating.

There may be a silver lining to the traumatic year that last year was. The topic of journalists’ mental health is becoming less taboo.

03/24/2025

Dave Philipps of The New York Times shares how he reported his stories despite extremely limited access to military officials and personnel. We have summarized his advice in nine tips.

Dave Philipps of The New York Times shares how he reported his stories despite extremely limited access to military officials and personnel.

03/21/2025

We spotlight free data sources journalists can use to report on economic issues ranging from GDP and inflation to economic inequality, along with topics outside of economics, such as education spending.

We spotlight 8 free data sources journalists can use to report on economic issues ranging from GDP and inflation to economic inequality.

03/20/2025

These tips will help you interrogate President Trump's proposal to close the U.S. Department of Education, provide historical context and evaluate the agency's effectiveness. (Pub date: Jan. 2025)

We offer eight tips to help you interrogate and contextualize President Trump's plan to close the U.S. Department of Education.

03/20/2025

Executive orders President Trump has signed in recent weeks carry significant implications for minority-serving institutions, which rely heavily on federal funding.

Knowing these eight things will help journalists ask better questions and provide more probing coverage of minority-serving institutions.

03/19/2025

This series, a collaboration between the UC Berkeley journalism program and the San Francisco Chronicle, shows how hundreds of officers used clean-record agreements to conceal their past. The series is one of the finalists for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting.

The series, published in the San Francisco Chronicle, shows how hundreds of officers used clean-record agreements to conceal their past, often from future employers.

03/19/2025

This August 2023 piece is part of a three-part series, where we look at recent research on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a major component of the farm bill.

We take a look at recent research on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a major part of the farm bill.

03/18/2025

In this August 2024 piece, we provide an overview of dengue, followed by summaries of several research studies.

In this research roundup, we provide a brief overview of dengue, followed by summaries of several research studies.

03/18/2025

KARE 11 journalists explain how they found alarming fraudulent Medicaid billing practices at several addiction recovery centers and share reporting tips.

03/17/2025

In this piece, we share reporting tips, explain how vaccine side effects are tracked in the U.S., and discuss research on the safety of childhood vaccines.

In this piece, we include reporting tips, how vaccine side effects are tracked in the U.S., and what research shows about the safety of childhood vaccines.

03/15/2025

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03/14/2025

Journalists, researchers and the public can now access a searchable database of Facebook whistleblower documents, including internal chat threads, reports, presentations and more. (Published October 2023)

Journalists, researchers and the public can now access FBarchive, a searchable database of Facebook whistleblower documents.

03/12/2025

These tips will help you interrogate President Trump's proposal to close the U.S. Department of Education, provide historical context and evaluate the agency's effectiveness.

We offer eight tips to help you interrogate and contextualize President Trump's plan to close the U.S. Department of Education.