"This brief course curriculum does not pretend to be a definitive text, but rather a practical outline to introduce American-style investigative reporting in foreign countries. Class exercises are designed to encourage reporters to use a new approach on stories of their own choosing, to dig deeper, and aim higher. The manual was developed during a nine-month Knight International Press Fellowship which sent me to the Centers for Independent Journalism in Budapest (Hungary), Bucharest (Romania), Bratislava (Slovakia) and Prague (Czech Republic). Most of my reporting experience was at The Philadelphia Inquirer, so I tend to talk about of the evolution of investigative reporting there.
Initially I was sympathetic when journalists protested that they couldn’t do big stories, couldn’t get documents, were denied information from authorities, and didn’t have more than a few hours to work on a story. But I began to see that the biggest obstacles to first-rate, in-depth journalism were not the result of a repressive regime, or threats to personal security, but rather the obstacles of convincing editors to spend money and time on stories, and the lack of persistence and willingness to take on a difficult, enervating story and bring it to conclusion. Lack of tradition does matter, as there are few role models here, few stories to serve as inspiration. I began to emphasize that these problems plague journalists everywhere, including the United States. The message was: there are no shortcuts to ambitious reporting, but stories that take a lot of time and effort are always worthwhile." (Introduction, page 2)