Making Online News

Making Online News will be in Montreal during the ICA conference next week. Stop by the Peter Lang stand on Friday 23 at 10 am to chat with some of the contributors to the book!

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 paperback edition of the book is right out of the printer! I got the first copies today. Chris and I are amazed by the efficient production process at Peter Lang: we collected the final drafts from authors in September and sent in the final manuscript for proof-reading in January, and here it is! The cover shows the AP multimedia newsroom in New York. It is not at all the average newsroom –some of the chapters highlight cases with much less fancy technology; but the photo conveys the “on-screen” life of an online journalism.

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.