Making The News - In the Age Of The Internet

A reader writes:"Dan Gillmor has just published a column on his weblog about creating a collaborative book with his readers. The outline/full details are on his page - O'Reilly will be publishing the book." Dan and I spoke briefly about this - it's semisimilar to what Slashdot did with Jane's Intelligence Review - which turned out well.

Will bad ideas ever stop being implemented?

[ObviousGuy]

The only collaboration necessary in writing is from fact checkers who verify the veracity of the content and an editor who makes sure that the author doesn't look like an idiot who can't spell 'lose' and 'definitely'.

If you are acting in either of these capacities without getting paid, you are a sucker.

Re:I'm glad that I read the outline so...

[an_mo]

I think you're missing the point. This is not a manual for news publishing. This book is trying to describe and advocate a new way to make news (not books). The target readers are (I think) journalists, news makers, news corporatinons, and what he is trying to say to them is that they can't ignore the possibilities opened by new technologies (such as slashcode).

If you understand this, then you understand than a printed book is a legitimate outlet: this book needs to reach those who don't normally read stuff on the net.