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Making The News - In the Age Of The Internet 45

Posted by Hemos from the how-does-the-media-work dept.
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.
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Making The News - In the Age Of The Internet More

Making The News - In the Age Of The Internet

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  • 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.

  • Sounds like an odd idea.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @10:40AM (#5693459) Homepage Journal

    I really can't see O'Reilly publishing a book replete with l337sp34k, goatse.cx links and old "In Soviet Russia.." lines, but what do I know?

  • I'm glad that I read the outline so... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jj_johny ( 626460 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @10:41AM (#5693461)
    I don't have to buy the book. Not that its not a bad idea its just another one of those "here is this story that points out this fact or direction or whatever". Not that these aren't entertaining if the writer is good (i.e The New New Thing was good) but it really is like reading a newspaper put into a book. (And if wanted that I would buy the Onion's century in review.) And these get oh so stale. I cringe at some of the drivel that still is sitting on book shelves at the local B&N or Borders about new technology that is so wrong, dated and such a waste of paper.

    Hope the best for the author but I will not be buying it.

    And why put out a book when you have perfectly good web publishing tools, money perhaps??? So for all the talk in the outline about news being different on the web, its really not for the authors - weblog != money for authors.

    • 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 stuf

  • Dead Tree Blog (Score:3, Insightful)

    by stanmann ( 602645 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @10:43AM (#5693471) Journal
    The real question is, how many people will pay to read what basically amounts to a Paper bound version of slashdot. Understandably, everyone who contributes will want a copy in order to see his name mentioned in the contributors section, but will this be particularly profitable for O'Reilly otherwise?
  • To me this looks like another old media giving way to new media. The internet is bringing us all together etc. New levels of information freedom *cough*. I thinks its a cool idea but I do hope there will some examples of how the internet hasn't yet beaten things like TV for getting information across to a wide audience quickly and effectivly

    Rus

  • great plan (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Photon01 ( 662761 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @11:01AM (#5693573)
    These guys at must be geniuses:

    1. Get loads of idiots online to collaborate on a book
    2. Publish book
    3. Idiots from (1.) will want to buy the book they are in ....
    4. Profit!!!!

    PS. is it just me or is slashdot very slashdotted today?

  • You write and he takes the money? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by watzinaneihm ( 627119 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @11:04AM (#5693589) Journal
    Hmmm...
    I wouldnt mind contributing but what do I get for it? Looks lkike I still will have to buy the books to get any info.
    I rather like the Bruce Eckel [mindview.net] model, he publishes the book online, anybody can contribute online(though your contributions might not make it to the paper version), and you only have to pay if you want a paper copy of the book. Almost like GPL.The end result does look good.
    Or maybe the Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] model More like BSD license.

  • Collaboration: good. Lulu.com (Score:4, Informative)

    by firewort ( 180062 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @11:36AM (#5693719)
    Collaboration is a good thing. It's the foundation of things like the Free Software movement, and Open Source movement. It's how performers make good music.

    Arguably, it also produces a lot of trash, but hey, there's a market for that, too.

    The interesting thing here is that O'Reilly is taking this up with Gillmor. Not everyone can get published by O'Reilly, so what's a regular guy to do? Use Lulu.com, a new site founded by Bob Young, formerly of RedHat [slashdot.org]. You register as an author, and your collaborators register as an author, and you can all submit chapters to each other's books for collaboration. Then you can set price for online, print, or cd distribution, collecting an 80% royalty. No other publishing deal I know of sets an 80% royalty to the author.

    Or choose no royalty and set the price for online distribution to free. Books can be published under any license you like, just place the copyright page with the license you like in the book when you upload it.

  • re-posted because I missed catching URL errors in preview. DOH.

    Collaboration is a good thing. It's the foundation of things like the Free Software movement, and Open Source movement. It's how performers make good music.

    Arguably, it also produces a lot of trash, but hey, there's a market for that, too.

    The interesting thing here is that O'Reilly is taking this up with Gillmor. Not everyone can get published by O'Reilly, so what's a regular guy to do?

    Use Lulu.com [lulu.com], a new site founded by Bob Young, former

  • OMG (Score:3, Funny)

    by hrm ( 26016 ) on Wednesday April 09, 2003 @02:11PM (#5694753)
    "In the Age of the Internet"

    For one ghastly moment I thought Jon Katz was posting again!

  • Hmmm, I read the outline and didn't see the chapter about "What if it's just a big ol' fad and we're all smoking crack?"

    I like his intros to each paragraph summary. "Something happened! Clueless old media farts ignored it! Hip, happenin' bloggers circle-linked it to death! Hilarity and/or new paradigms ensued!"

    I suppose if I actually felt it would make any difference, I would write a long piece about why this will not fundamentally change journalism, and submit it to Gillmor. But I suspect he is already

  • Can the /. model be ported to topics other than tech news? What do you guys think about the failure of plastic.com? After 2 years, the site is essentially unknown to the general public and established media (unlike slashdot). I am doubting that this model of journalism can be successful when the readership is not so nerdish as in /. or kuro5hin (which has an even more complex method). I wish it weren't so but I think the facts seem to be speaking.

    PS on a side note, I think the /. crowd is missing a chance
    • I don't think it's fair to say that plastic has failed. They still have daily posts with a good number of responses. Probably the reason plastic is less popular than /. and kuro5hin is due to its generalist nature. Basically I could do what they do sitting in the break room with a newspaper and my coworkers. Even back in the 80s specialization was viewed as the formula for BBS success. Although kuro5hin is more general than /. I would say that its high percentage of user written content makes it unique
  • There are a lot of collaborative fiction sites around including http://www.prosebush.com -- check it out.... Mostly crap, but every once and a while a few people get together and create some great stuff.

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