I need to thank many people for helping me turn this book into reality. Jane Harrigan, my editor, and Charisse Kiino, my publisher, helped drive this project and make it great. Jeff Jarvis wrote a fantastic introduction and Mike Orren  supplied and annotated the original business plan for Pegasus News. An invaluable resource.

The book is available at the CQPress website where, if you are a college professor, you can request a review copy. It is also available on Amazon.com (where the shipping is cheaper than buying from CQPress) and will be available on Kindle and other e-book forms soon.

The first bite comes from Jeff Jarvis, who wrote an awesome forward for the book. He did a great job of setting the stage, including the following passage:

The opportunities are indeed endless. That is why I am a cockeyed optimist about the future of news. There is more demand for and interest in news than ever. We have more ways to gather, analyze, and distribute news than we ever could have imagined before the Internet. We have new ways to listen to the public, so we can serve them better. We have new efficiencies to exploit.

But most important, we have entrepreneurs and journalists who have the courage to try to build the future of news. And now, thanks to this book, they have a plan.

Amen, brother.

In 2009 I asked you (and my LinkedIn colleagues) to vote for your favorite title among 4 options and many of you answered “none of the above.” Which was fine, because several of you offered great alternatives. One of them ended up as the title: Journalism Next.

I’m finishing my third book and this time the focus is on how to launch your own journalism or news-based startup. I’ve been looking for a catchy term for “entrepreneurial journalist” but haven’t found one. So I’m turning to the collective wisdom of my blog readers  for help. Please let me know which of the following three options you like best or, if you don’t like any of them, give me a suggestion for something better.

NOTE: A technical glitch prevented anyone from actually voting in this poll. I’m leaving it up so you can see what we were considering. Thanks to everyone who voted and voiced their feedback by email, Twitter and LinkedIn.

After several months of waiting, the wizards at Amazon finally figured out how to process Journalism Next for the Kindle. Yes, you can finally purchase a book about digital media on … wait for it … digital media.

Unfortunately this occurs about six months later than the folks at Amazon told us to expect it.

The book is also available a la carte in electronic form on CQPress’s new custom publishing website. There, you can purchase it by the chapter, so if you want to assign your students certain sections, but not others, you’ll save them the expense and paper hassle of purchasing the entire book. I love this option, even if it means a little less for the author in the end.

In case you’re wondering, the book is selling well. It completely sold out at the conference book store this week at the SPJ conference (repeating the sell-out from SXSW earlier this year) and is getting adopted by college professors all over the country.

Thanks to everyone who has picked up a copy or contributed to its creation. You’re the reason I’m doing this all over again.

Chris O’Brien, Marketing Manager of the College Publishing Group at CQ Press sent me this update yesterday:

“The book is now in Amazon’s Kindle ingest process, which can take anywhere from two to four weeks.  As you can imagine, there are a number of variables that contribute to the timeline for this (all under Amazon’s control), but hopefully since your book has shown some nice sales so far through Amazon, it will encourage them to speed it up!”

The book will also be available a la carte in electronic form on CQPress’s new custom publishing website, hopefully within the next month.

Journalism Next: A Practical Guide to Digital Reporting and Publishing is available on Amazon.com or at the CQPress website. If you are interested in a review copy or bulk orders for classrooms, contact CQPress directly. (Note: unless it’s a bulk order, get the book through Amazon because the shipping is cheaper.)

In fact, I was so happy to work with CQPress, I’ve signed on for another project: Bootstrapping the News: The new business models for news and how to go from journalist to entrepreneur. This project is just getting going; it’s uncertain whether that will be the book’s title in the end or when it will publish. But I promise to keep you posted here and at my new blogging home, LostRemote.com.

CQPress is publishing Journalism Next and informed me recently that it will offer it as an e-book/online subscription, offering users the ability to customize books, building a custom publication a chapter at a time from the entire CQPress library of content. Pretty cool, huh?

The e-book version of Journalism Next should be available about the same time as the print edition, which is scheduled to be released on Nov. 10. You can pre-order the book at CQPress’s web site for $21.95.

Readers in Europe will be able to order the book from Sage Publishing, which is the parent company of CQPress, by using this link: http://www.uk.sagepub.com/cqpress.sp. It should also be available on Amazon.co.uk. It’s unclear whether there will be any lag time between the time when the book will be available in the U.S. and available on Amazon.co.uk.

Journalism Next is set for release on Nov. 10 (just in time for the Christmas shopping season!). You can pre-order the book at CQPress’s web site for $21.95. I didn’t have a say in the price tag but I’m happy to see that it’s not one of those $50-80 textbooks that I remember loathing in college. Who needs royalties, anyway?

The cover image is set and I’m working through the final changes to the manuscript and trying to answer some last questions from editors. I’m also struggling with what to do with developments in technology since I submitted the first draft. (If you know how Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed or Google’s Wave will impact journalism in 2010, let me know.)

I’m also updating the professional titles for sources I interviewed. So far, four different people have changed jobs (only one lost)  since I started researching and writing in January.

What are you waiting for? Don’t you have a book to pre-order?

Thankfully, my book is nearing the finish line of production. One of the final pieces is an appendix I’m working on that will offer readers a list of blogs and Web sites that are, for me, essential reading to stay informed about online journalism.

Because the book can’t be easily updated, and technology and the ways people use it are changing every day, it’s important to give readers a way to stay informed. Help me make the list as comprehensive (but not overwhelming) as possible.

Following is a list of blogs and Web sites that I used in writing the book and frequent on a regular basis to keep in touch with what’s next in journalism. Let me know if you have a suggestion for one that I’ve missed. (Links added 8/22/09 8 a.m.)

General news about online journalism:
Journalism.co.uk
Online Journalism Review
Nieman Journalism Lab

News and commentary about the digital media revolution:
Buzz Machine
Reflections of a Newsosaur
Xark!
Recovering Journalist
E-Media Tidbits
PressThink
Contentious
Publishing 2.0
PaidContent
Mashable
MediaShift
MediaShift Idea Lab
Lost Remote
CyberJournalist
The Journalism Iconoclast
Invisible Inkling
DigiDave
Steve Yelvington
Steve Outing

New skills, concepts for journalists:

Beatblogging
Teaching Online Journalism
Innovation in College Media
Poynter Online
Journalistopia
Online Journalism Blog
Journerdism
10,000 Words
Advancing the Story
Multimedia Shooter
Interactive Narratives
The Scoop
Old Media New Tricks
CoPress

Organizations for online journalists:

Online News Association
Wired Journalists

As more journalists go digital, sharing information becomes easier. That’s a good thing, since most newsrooms are a river of information, much of which should be easily available to all the journalists who work there.

Recently, several of the largest news organizations have built an application provider interface (API) to allow anyone to tap into their data and build tools and Web pages. The use of APIs is nothing new in the technology world; this is how Google made its maps the basis for so many “mash-ups.” But a news organization opening up its content through the use of APIs illustrates two important developments, one technical and one political:

1. News organizations are closing the technical divide, since it takes programming skills to develop an API
2. News organizations are finally realizing that closed systems and absolute control over content don’t work in the new digital information ecosystem.

Data-driven journalism as standard practice

Opportunities abound for using databases, spreadsheets and other forms of structured or fielded data in news coverage or story development. While some situations, like writing about the census or the latest property tax valuations, are obvious, almost any assignment can be broken down into data points and organized for customized manipulation.

Think of all the information that passes through a news organization every day. Now think how little of it is accessible to those who work there, or more importantly, to interested members of the public. This problem for news organizations and journalists can be fixed by storing information electronically with spreadsheets and shared databases.

For example, a typical newsroom compiles and publishes various lists, some weekly, some annually. The first problem here is that the audience wants access to that information now, not whenever the news organization gets around to publishing it. The next problem is how much repetitive effort goes into building or updating these lists each time they are published. So most daily newspapers have launched event calendar databases on their web sites where visitors can access the most recent information anytime. And event planners can log in and add their events directly into the database.

This is just one way that many news organizations are making their Web sites “data destinations,” as well they should. Computer-assisted reporting has been around for decades, but restricted to the newspaper format, it can’t realize its full potential. On the Web, it can sing, with depth, customization, searchability and a long shelf-life. USA Today realized this years ago when it began loading the salaries of professional baseball, football, basketball and hockey players into searchable databases.

Here are some other databases news sites are building and publishing:

* Public employee salaries
* Property taxes and assessments
* Top employers
* Test scores
* Summer camps for kids
* Restaurant and movie listings
* Vital statistics (births, deaths, divorces)
* News businesses and business hires and promotions
* Guide to local ski areas, golf courses, hiking trails, etc.

Each of these types of content, and more, has been entered by newsroom staff for years, if not decades. Newspapers have found success in maximizing the value of this information by providing it to their audiences in a searchable database format while streamlining their own operation and cutting down on the amount of data entry they do.

Online databases power the personal productivity tools such as contact lists and online task lists covered in Part 2 of this series and the data-driven journalism discussed here. Once you wrap your head around the power of databases, you’ll open yourself up to a new world of possibility with regard to news and information.

Further reading:
- Data as journalism, journalism as data
- Database journalism – a different definition of ‘news’ and ‘reader,’

Previously:
- Part 1: Data-driven journalism and digitizing your life
- Part 2: Digitzing your life and getting things done