The selection process was hard, but we ended up with twelve chapters that explore changes in newsroom organization (cross-media production, transitions to digital-only, radios exploring podcasting), the development of online news genres (breaking news, feature journalism, electoral campaign coverage) and the challenges for journalism beyond the newsroom (bloggers, news agencies, user participation).

The second volume includes a preface by the editors -also available in this website- on how to teach online journalism with Making Online News, with selections of chapters about key topics on using both volumes as reading material in the classroom. The epilogue by Pablo Boczkwoski suggests the forthcoming challenges for online journalism research.

You can meet Chris Paterson at the Peter Lang stand of the ICA 2011 conference in Boston, on Friday, May 27 at 12:00 pm.

Robinson suggests two weaknesses of the book, acknowledging at the same time that the book “provides a solid platform” for further research in online journalism. She notes that many of the chapters are based on ethnographies conducted before 2003. Ethnography is a method that does not provide quick results, and often an author’s best analysis of their ethnographic research comes years after they gather data. In the book, evidence from the case studies is relevant beyond its temporal time frame, as it shows that innovation processes and professionals’ attitudes are prone to reproduce existing practices than create new ones. And in the long run, the value of Making Online News will be documenting a historical period that was critical in the definition of journalism on the Internet (1998-2007).

The author of the review also warns that “some more stringent practitioners of ethnography would take issue with the liberal employ of the term”. We agree. In the introduction to the book we observe that the definitions of “ethnography” are very fluid, and that some of the research in the book is not classically ethnographic. We feel it is a strength of the book to portray the reality of this method through the diverse strategies of the chapter authors. At the time the book was assembled there were few ethnographic projects on online newsrooms meeting more stringent definitions of the method and they are represented in the book. We feel the diversity of approaches is a contribution to the methodological discussion on the future of ethnography.

Mediekultur, Journal of Media and Communication Research, number 45 (PDF, in Danish)

Textual & Visual Media, Spanish Jounralistic Society Journal, number 1 (review not available online, in Spanish)

Jornalismo & Jornalistas, magazine of the Portuguese Journalism Association, number 37 (PDF, in Portuguese)

Please, let us know if you find other reviews!

Paul Bradshaw, on E-Media Tidbits, focuses on Lowrey and Latta’s chapter about blogging production routines, and points out that the trend they detect -the more influential bloggers become, the more their routines resemble journalism- is “dissapointing”, because he would have liked bloggers to be more innovative. “This is one of the few studies I’ve seen that examines the work practices of bloggers (…) We need more research like this”, underlines Bradshaw.

Ryan Thornburg did a survey of online journalists in North Carolina (USA), and found the book inspiring, as ethnographic evidence in its chapters confirmed his results that journalists working for the web are rather conservative regarding the exploration of Internet features, and value more traditional journalistic principles than technological skills.

Tom Van Hout reviews Making Online News among other books, and argues they are “proof that the inter/transdisciplinary study of news production and news discourse is en vogue”. We also hope that!

The reception will be held in the Spelbomskan room at the main Aula Magna conference hall, 7th floor, at Stockholm University, at 7pm.  Some of the researchers who have been involved with the book will be there, and we will ask them to provide some brief comments and updates on their ethnographies –if they can be persuaded.

The gathering will be small, but if you are interested in news production ethnography or in online journalism, please come along! Just let us know at info@makingonlinenews.net.

Alfred Hermida, former editor of the BBC News website and now at British Columbia University, interviewed David in Montréal. One of the issues risen in the interview is the sacralization of immediacy in online media, a trend that -along with the lack of resources- may have prevented online newsrooms from developing more creative products. The book offers a good summary of the constraints of online newsrooms and, hopefully, a good knowledge base to overcome them.

In the conference, online news production is not the hottest topic, but there are several relevant papers you may want to download from the conference website (only available if you are attending).

The most exciting trend is that quasi-ethnographic methods are being applied to research the phenomenon of citizen journalism. David Domingo will be chairing a session (Friday 23 at 13:30) about the challenges of studying audience participation in online media, where Alfred Hermida and Zvi Reich will contribute their experiences interviewing online editors and citizen reporters respectively.

The “Digital news” session (Saturday 24 at 15:00) offers papers based in content and structural analysis of websites: comparing blogs and professional news sites agendas, assessing interactive features…

The papers you may want to read:

• Citizen Journalism: Access to Writers Versus Access to Sources?, by Zvi Reich. Based on reconstructions of routines through narrations by citizen reporters.
• Professional Imagination in Newspaper Newsrooms, by Risto Kunelius and Laura Ruusunoksa. Based on interviews regarding attitudes towards innovation.
• The Choice Gap: The Softening of News and the Divergent Preferences of Journalists and Consumers, by Pablo J. Boczkowski and Limor Peer. Based on content and website stats analysis.

Amazon sold out the first bunch of copies of Making Online News in few hours and is now offering it with a 33% discount. Not sure how this market dynamics work, but hopefully you have been able to get the book! We look forward to your feeback both at the Amazon reviews’ central and in this website.

The book will be in stores in May, but you can already pre-order it at Amazon. There is a 5% discount on the final price ($32.95) if you pre-order before it becomes available at this online bookstore.

In different countries, from Germany to the US, from China to Argentina, different researchers started to investigate the trends. And we ended up getting to know each other in conferences and through papers. What we had in common was the willingness to understand how media dealt with innovation, with new languages and logics. And each of us was convinced that the better way to explore this was to step into the online newsrooms and live with the journalists, their expectations and their worries.

Chris Paterson had the idea of putting together a book based on this ethnographic research of online newsrooms back in 2003, as a spin off of the Media Production Analysis group at IAMCR. In the last four years we have invited pioneers and new scholars interested in online newsroom research to summarize their findings to generate the first collective exploration of online journalism from the inside, a critical look at the routines and values of the new frontier of news production.

And as the book becomes a reality (will be published by Peter Lang in May 2008), we would like it to be a starting point: An invitation for much-needed ethnographic research in the newsrooms of converging media in a moment of profound transformations. This website wants to turn the book into the core of a network of researchers that will share their experiences through this blog. You are invited to join the conversation in the comments section below each story or sending an email to info [at] makingonlinenews.net.