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.

Results of the ethnographies in online newsrooms of half-dozen of countries collected in Making Online News support the journalistic description of the piece posted at Le Monde. Immediacy rules the working routines of online journalism. This is not to say that there is no experimental online journalism and room for multimedia reportages and feature reporting. Steen Steensen is researching this aspect of online news (see Journalism Practice for a content-analysis paper and forthcoming ethnographic results in Journalism and Journalism Studies), where innovation is more intense than in daily breaking news production, but we need to acknowledge that this is the exception to the rule of working routines in online newsrooms.

A recent survey of US online journalists by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism suggests that they are more optimistic regarding the future survival of the profession than their traditional media counterparts. However, they are concerned that Web publishing is loosening the quality standards of the profession and that online media still has not found a clear revenue model. Read a summary of the study at Poynter.org.

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.

• Talk to the Newsroom: Deputy Managing Editor Jonathan Landman, at NYTimes.com.
• No Casual Operation: Inside a Citizen Journalism Newsroom, by Geoff Dougherty, Editor of Chi-Town Daily News, at Poynter Online.

The first piece is a conversation of readers with the top editor of the online newsroom of the New York Times. His answers shed some light on the relationships between the print and online operations, news production routines for the web or the redefinition of newsworthiness based on audience stats.

The second story is a report on the working routines of a citizen media operation in Chicago. The editor explains how they recruit, coordinate and motivate over thirty citizen reporters, how software for customer-relationship management helped build a virtual newsroom and what expectations they have about the role of participatory journalism.

Both articles are first-person accounts of the new routines and challenges of Internet journalism. They are extraordinarily valuable but, at the same time, lack what an ethnographer could offer observing these newsrooms herself: the thoroughness and fairness of an independent observer; the analytical ability to trace factors and constraints of current practices and to compare cases; or the systematic nature of research guided by powerful theoretical tools.

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.