print this article

Journalism 2.0 should be published in May

Here’s a quick update on the book publishing schedule: According to Jan Schafer at J-Lab, the material will first be published online at the Knight Citizen News Network site (see the outline here.)

It is also being laid out in book form and we should start seeing sets of designs and proofs. Then it will be sent to the printers. “I hope for hard copies, assuming all goes well, by late May,” Jan wrote in an email.

Both Jan and I have been receiving queries from college professors since it’s the time of year to order textbooks for the fall. I didn’t originally envision this project as a textbook, but am flattered that colleges are interested. It was intended for newsrooms, but the basic digital literacy lessons it contains are needed in so many areas these days that now we’re talking about broadening the subtitle to make it more inclusive to those outside the journalism profession. Professionals in business, marketing, PR and advertising are seeing the need for evolution just as much as news organizations these days.

My favorite example of this is the “Will it Blend?” campaign from a previously unknown company called Blendtec. Instead of buying traditional advertising, they made some video demonstrations of their product without a sales pitch and uploaded them to YouTube. The videos have become an Internet phenomenon, the kind of marketing money can’t buy. (My kids love them, by the way.)

Check them out here.

Posted by MarkBriggs on Saturday, April 28, 2007
Permalink