• Sources

• Harcup, Tony (2009),Journalism: Principles and Practice,Thousand Oaks, California:Sage Publications,ISBN978-1847872500,OCLC280437077

• Further reading

• Encyclopedia of journalism, ed. by Christopher H. Sterling, Thousand Oaks, Calif. [etc.] : SAGE, 2009, 6 vls.

• Kristina Borjesson (ed.): Into the Buzzsaw. Leading Journalists expose The Myth of a Free Press, New York: Prometheus Books, 2002

• Campbell, W. Joseph, Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism, Berkeley : University of California Press, 2010.ISBN 9780520262096

• Journalism genres

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The term "journalism genres" refers to variousjournalismstyles, fields or separategenres, in writing accounts of events.

Newspapers and periodicals often contain features(seeFeature style) written by journalists, many of whom specialize in this form of in-depth journalistic writing.

Feature articles are usually longer forms of writing; more attention is paid to style than in straight news reports. They are often combined with photographs, drawings or other "art." They may also be highlighted by typographic effects or colors.

Writing features can be more demanding than writing straight news stories, because while a journalist must apply the same amount of effort to accurately gather and report the facts of the story, he or she must also find a creative and interesting way to writeit. Thelead(or first two paragraphs of the story; seeNut graph) must grab the reader's attention and yet accurately embody the ideas of the article.

In the last half of the 20th Century, the line between straight news reporting and feature writing became blurred. Journalists and publications today experiment with different approaches to writing. Tom Wolfe,Gay Talese,Hunter S. Thompsonare some of these examples. Urban and alternative weekly newspapers go even further in blurring the distinction, and many magazines include more features than straight news.

Some television news shows experimented with alternative formats, and many TV shows that claimed to be news shows were not considered as such by traditional critics, because their content and methods do not adhere to accepted journalistic standards. National Public Radio, on the other hand, is considered a good example of mixing straight news reporting, features, and combinations of the two, usually meeting standards of high quality. Other US public radio news organizations have achieved similar results. A majority of newspapers still maintain a clear distinction between news and features, as do most television and radio news organizations.

• Ambush journalism

Ambush journalism refers to aggressive tactics practiced by journalists to suddenly confront and question people who otherwise do not wish to speak to a journalist. The practice has particularly been applied by television journalists, on news shows likeThe O'Reilly Factor[1]and60 Minutes[citation needed] and byGeraldo Riveraand other local television reporters conducting investigations.

The practice has been sharply criticized by journalists and others as being highly unethicalandsensational, while others defend it as the only way to attempt to provide those subject to it an opportunity to comment for a report. This can usually be discerned by the level of physical aggression the journalist displays and in the time allowed for an uninterrupted answer.