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I’m writing a book and I need your help

Fighting for eyeballs is an uphill battle. And if you work at a legacy news operation like a newspaper, the hill seems to be getting steeper.

Traditional news web sites keep improving. But so does the competition. And since most of us have been playing catch-up to Yahoo and Google and others for years, we can’t ever take a day off.

The folks working in the new media departments at news organizations are bright, talented and driven. But they’re outnumbered deciseively when compared to the pure-play technology sites. They need help. And the irony is, most of them work with some of the smartest and most talented people in the information business.

It’s long past time to enlist everyone at your news organization in the fight for eyeballs, no matter if they’re reading paper or pixels or just listening or watching. But the “old media department” needs some new skills. And it’s up to us new media types to deliver.

That’s why I’m writing this book and why J-Lab has agreed to sponsor the effort. And since we’re talking about “Journalism 2.0,” I’m going to write this book mostly as a blog - this blog - and let others tell me if I’m on the right track or if I’m heading for a cliff. (Thanks Chris Anderson for the inspiration.)

A year ago I started a monthly training session at the newspaper where I work (The News Tribune in Tacoma). I was floored by the attendance. In fact I often razzed the managing editor that my voluntary sessions drew more folks than her mandatory staff meetings. So I mentioned this training to Jan Schaffer at J-Lab and she suggested I turn it into a book.

I thought: “what a great idea.” But the problem is I don’t know enough to be the authority on all these skills - not even close. I have four years’ experience teaching a 300-level class in college and a master’s degree in journalism, so I should be able to put together the lessons in a fairly coherent way. But how could I be sure that the skills and tools I’d be discussing would be regarded as the latest and greatest?

That’s where you come in. If you know a great web site, handout or just a passing suggestion on how to teach non-techie journalists the tricks of the digitial trade, I want to hear it. If I inlcude it in the book, it will be done with complete credit to the person who passed it along. At the very least, maybe we can learn a few things from each other.

I’ll post the tentative chapter outline for all to see and critique, and then I’ll tackle each chapter one at a time, hoping for input specific to each topic area to bolster what I already know.

So do something good for the future of journalism. Help me build a training handbook that will be so insightful and enlightening that even the most hard-crusted curmudgeon will want to give up that council meeting and start a Skypecast.

Posted by MarkBriggs on Tuesday, September 26, 2006
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