A book about online news production routines

The long-awaited moment has arrived for me! This morning I received the first copies of the book I have co-edited with Chris Paterson: Making Online News: The Ethnography of New Media Production. It is the first compilation of research into the working routines and values of online journalists. Chapters by 15 authors --including Thorsten Quandt, Jane Singer and Mark Deuze-- offer for the first time the insight of ethnography
into the newsrooms.

In a field where most books tend to deal with the theoretical possibilities of online news, we have tried
to offer a reality-check: researchers contributing to the book have lived with journalists in the online newsrooms to describe their real practices and the constraints they face. We hope that this perspective will be very useful for the teaching of online journalism and for professionals willing to have a deeper understanding of the evolution of their job.

It is, at the same time, an invitation for more ethnographic research, for the rich data it generates. Ethnography entails observing professionals at work until their routines and values are fully understood, but also in-depth interviews and work with on-site documents. It is time-consuming, but the results are worth the effort!

The book has two added attractive features: it has a multi-national dimension, showcasing examples from Argentina to Germany, from the USA to China. And also, it collects research from different moments in the evolution of online journalism, form late 1990s to 2007: it can be read in part as a history of online news.

We have set up a website, makingonlinenews.net to continue the task of the book. Our intention is to keep track of relevant and critical online journalism research. There you will also find info about the book chapters and authors. The book will be in stores on May and you can already pre-order it on Amazon --you will get a 5% discount!