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Publishing News at PressThink

It was announced today at Publishers Marketplace as their "deal of the day." And it was in Publisher's Lunch, a popular e-mail alert. Gatekeepers Without Gates, my book project, has been greenlighted.

It was announced today at Publishers Marketplace (a pay site for industry players) under the heading “deal of the day.” And it was in Publisher’s Lunch: “Jay Rosen on how the Internet is changing media.”

The deal is: I have agreed to a contract with Times Books, a division of Henry Holt, to write a book about the press and everything that is happening to it in these days of the Internet. The working title (although this will probably change) is Gatekeepers Without Gates. If all goes well, it will be out sometime in 2006, hopefully sooner rather than later in the year.

Transparency Time

Times Books is a joint venture between the New York Times, flagship of the American press, and Henry Holt, the publishing house. The official history goes like this:

The New York Times Company bought Quadrangle Books, a Chicago book publisher, in 1969, changing the name to Times Books in 1977. But the forces of consolidation were at work against these smaller operations. In 1984, the Times licensed the imprint to Random House, and the editorial operation of Times Books moved there, to become a unit of a much larger firm.

The agreement with Random House expired in December of 1999. The Times Company owned the rights to Times Books, but chose not to re-launch it without a major publisher as partner, so the imprint faded for a while. In July 2000, The Times and Holtzbrinck Publishers, U.S. arm of the German global media company, announced an agreement to re-launch it.

Henry Holt and Company replaced Random House. The operation moved from Midtown to W. 18th Street in New York. Since the spring of 2001, Times Books is alive again as a joint venture between Holt (a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers) and the New York Times Company. The editorial director of Times Books is Paul Golob, who used to be at Public Affairs Books. He made the final decision. He also understands the book I want to write. He’s a fan of PressThink.

I will get more precise information on it soon, but it’s correct to say that publishing Gatekeepers Without Gates, or whatever it ends up being called, is a co-venture between Henry Holt and the New York Times Company. So that’s who’s publishing my book.

The question naturally comes: You’re a press critic, you write about the New York Times all the time (like… yesterday) and they’re involved in co-publishing your book. Did the conflict alarm go off?

Yes. The Times Company publishes the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and some smaller newspapers, any one of which I might write about. So the potential conflicts are numerous. The Times is a media company; not the same kind as a giant like Viacom, but a media company nonetheless. It has interests, stakes and “holdings.” Times Books is one.

PressThink readers are entitled to draw whatever conclusions they wish, and apply any discount rate they choose, to what I say, now that they know who is publishing my book (or planning to.) Between me as author and the journalists at the New York Times there is Henry Holt, a publishing house of high reputation, and the people who run the imprint, Times Books. Most especially there is Paul Golob, editorial director, and Robin Dennis, my editor. My agent, Kate Lee of ICM, recommended the match and thinks the book will be wanted there.

By agreeing to the deal, I trust in their professionalism; and I feel I have ample reason to do so. If you were to ask me why I felt comfortable with Times Books as my publisher, for a book that will look critically at the New York Times (and the Boston Globe, and others) one answer would be those people and their colleagues and the high standard they have set.

Another answer would be that it’s an advantage, and an honor, to be part of a publishing imprint that somehow connects back to the press, and to such principles of public service as animate the New York Times and its people. Such a publisher might better understand what I am up to. It’s in the DNA.

Perhaps that’s more than an author should have to say in announcing a simple book deal. Or not enough. Who knows? But in my Q and A about PressThink I said to readers: here’s where I’m coming from, I am not a neutral agent at all. (“My views on issues would be standard Upper West Side Liberal Jewish babyboomer— even though I don’t live in that neighborhood.”) That’s my blogger disclosure form. This is a continuation of that.

Yeah, but what about the book?

When I was in graduate school, I took a course in psychology that was simply a series of challenging psychology books, and a teacher who knew them all, very well, having taught the list before. (All my good courses were that way.)

In the next to last week of the term, he put aside his notes and the text for that week, and let us in on something. “In any good course,” he said, “there’s the reading list, the books you are assigned, which we discuss, and there is the Secret Book.” The students exchanged glances. “That’s the one not on the list. It’s the book I had to read in order to make this list, and teach this course.” We were starting to get it. “I am now going to tell you about the Secret Book.”

And he did, bringing it out of his briefcase to show us. (I still have my copy of the book, Changing Nature of Man: Introduction to a Historical Psychology by Jan Hendrick Van Den Berg.) This was the single most effective teaching trick I ever encountered, for we had all read the Secret Book by the final week of class. Therefore he could give the lecture that could only be given to those who had met the text with the same intensity he had. The Secret Book. What an idea!

But it doesn’t work if the book remains a secret. Gatekeepers Without Gates (a working title) I envision as the “secret book” behind the week-to-week posting at PressThink. Of course, that’s just a figure of speech. I could also say: the book will be the backstory to the story you can follow by clicking in here. A different figure of speech. For a preview of sorts, see Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over.

I will keep this weblog going; it’s working too well to stop. (You may see other writers more, or bigger changes if I can raise the money.) There’s no doubt PressThink got the publisher interested in the possibilities for this book. In my case, the blog was like a “live” proposal, where there is activity day and night. I haven’t decided whether to do a special blog for the book. (Some do that; see The Long Tail: “A public diary on the way to a book,” or the blog for Darknet.) For now, not.

I’m excited about the deal; of course a book is a lot of work. (“Like pushing a mountain through your head,” says a friend who’s done it.) Just describing where we are in journalism today is daunting. Measuring up to Dan Gillmor’s We the Media— equally daunting.

“More is up for grabs than has ever been up for grabs since I started my watch,” I said in Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over. I believe that. The book I hope to write essentially begins there.

After Matter: Notes, reactions & links…

I will be happy to explain more in the comments for those who are interested. And of course you are invited to tell me what my book should be about.

Publisher’s Markerplace announcement: “Jay Rosen’s book on the media, exploring the ways in which the Internet has transformed, and will continue to transform, the press through web logs and other interactive forms, including a look at why an interactive, open-source press is gaining public support and views on what big media corporations and journalists must do to regain the public’s trust, to Robin Dennis at Times Books, by Kate Lee at ICM (world).”

Posted by Jay Rosen at February 4, 2005 3:02 PM Print

The People Formerly Known as the Audience: "You don't own the eyeballs. You don't own the press, which is now divided into pro and amateur zones. You don't control production on the new platform, which isn't one-way. There's a new balance of power between you and us." More...

Migration Point for the Press Tribe: "Like reluctant migrants everywhere, the people in the news tribe have to decide what to take with them. When to leave. Where to land. They have to figure out what is essential to their way of life. They have to ask if what they know is portable." More...

Bloggers vs. Journalists is Over: "Here is one advantage bloggers have in the struggle for reputation-- for the user's trust. They are closer to the transaction where trust gets built up on the Web. There's a big difference between tapping a built-up asset, like the St. Pete Times 'brand,' and creating it from scratch." More...

"Where's the Business Model for News, People?" "It’s remarkable to me how many accomplished producers of those goods the future production of which is in doubt are still at the stage of asking other people, “How are we going to pay our reporters if you guys don’t want to pay for our news?'" More...

National Explainer: A Job for Journalists on the Demand Side of News This American Life's great mortgage crisis explainer, The Giant Pool of Money, suggests that "information" and "explanation" ought to be reversed in our order of thought. Especially as we contemplate new news systems. More...

The Beast Without a Brain: Why Horse Race Journalism Works for Journalists and Fails Us. "Just so you know, 'the media' has no mind. It cannot make decisions. Which means it does not 'get behind' candidates. It does not decide to oppose your guy… or gal. It is a beast without a brain. Most of the time, it doesn’t know what it’s doing.." More...

They're Not in Your Club but They Are in Your League: Firedoglake at the Libby Trial: "I’m just advising Newsroom Joe and Jill: make room for FDL in your own ideas about what’s coming on, news-wise. Don’t let your own formula (blog=opinion) fake you out. A conspiracy of the like minded to find out what happened when the national news media isn’t inclined to tell us might be way more practical than you think." More...

Twilight of the Curmudgeon Class: "We’re at the twilight of the curmudgeon class in newsrooms and J-schools. (Though they can still do a lot of damage.) You know they’re giving up when they no longer bother to inform themselves about what they themselves say is happening." More...

Getting the Politics of the Press Right: Walter Pincus Rips into Newsroom Neutrality "The important thing is to show integrity-- not to be a neuter, politically. And having good facts that hold up is a bigger advantage than claiming to reflect all sides equally well." More...

A Most Useful Definition of Citizen Journalism "It's mine, but it should be yours. Can we take the quote marks off now? Can we remove the 'so-called' from in front? With video!." More...

The Master Narrative in Journalism: "Were 'winning' to somehow be removed or retired as the operating system for news, campaign reporting would immediately become harder to do, not because there would be no news, but rather no common, repeatable instructions for deciding what is a key development in the story, a turning point, a surprise, a trend. Master narratives are thus harder to alter than they are to apprehend. For how do you keep the story running while a switch is made?" More...

He Said, She Said Journalism: Lame Formula in the Land of the Active User "Any good blogger, competing journalist or alert press critic can spot and publicize false balance and the lame acceptance of fact-free spin. Do users really want to be left helpless in sorting out who's faking it more? The he said, she said form says they do, but I say decline has set in." More...

Users-Know-More-than-We-Do Journalism: "It's a "put up or shut up" moment for open source methods in public interest reporting. Can we take good ideas like... distributed knowledge, social networks, collaborative editing, the wisdom of crowds, citizen journalism, pro-am reporting... and put them to work to break news?" More...

Introducing NewAssignment.Net: "Enterprise reporting goes pro-am. Assignments are open sourced. They begin online. Reporters working with smart users and blogging editors get the story the pack wouldn't, couldn't or didn't." More...

What I Learned from Assignment Zero "Here are my coordinates for the territory we need to be searching. I got them from doing a distributed trend story with Wired.com and thinking through the results." More...

If Bloggers Had No Ethics Blogging Would Have Failed, But it Didn't. So Let's Get a Clue: "Those in journalism who want to bring ethics to blogging ought to start with why people trust (some) bloggers, not with an ethics template made for a prior platform operating as a closed system in a one-to-many world." More...

The View From Nowhere: "Occupy the reasonable middle between two markers for 'vocal critic,' and critics look ridiculous charging you with bias. Their symmetrical existence feels like proof of an underlying hysteria. Their mutually incompatible charges seem to cancel each other out. The minute evidence they marshall even shows a touch of fanaticism." More...

Rollback: "This White House doesn't settle for managing the news--what used to be called 'feeding the beast'--because there is a larger aim: to roll back the press as a player within the executive branch, to make it less important in running the White House and governing the country." More...

Retreat from Empiricism: On Ron Suskind's Scoop: ""Realist, a classic term in foreign policy debates, and reality-based, which is not a classic term but more of an instant classic, are different ideas. We shouldn't fuzz them up. The press is capable of doing that because it never came to terms with what Suskind reported in 2004." More...

Karl Rove and the Religion of the Washington Press: "Savviness--that quality of being shrewd, practical, well-informed, perceptive, ironic, 'with it,' and unsentimental in all things political--is, in a sense, their professional religion. They make a cult of it. And it was this cult that Karl Rove understood and exploited for political gain." More...

Journalism Is Itself a Religion: "We're headed, I think, for schism, tumult and divide as the religion of the American press meets the upheavals in global politics and public media that are well underway. Changing around us are the terms on which authority can be established by journalists. The Net is opening things up, shifting the power to publish around. Consumers are becoming producers, readers can be writers." More...

News Turns from a Lecture to a Conversation: "Some of the pressure the blogs are putting on journalists shows up, then, in the demand for "news as conversation," more of a back-and-forth, less of a pronouncement. This is an idea with long roots in academic journalism that suddenly (as in this year) jumped the track to become part of the news industry's internal dialogue." More...

Two Washington Posts May Be Better Than One: "They're not equals, but Washington and Arlington have their own spheres. Over the newspaper and reporting beats Len Downie is king. Over the website Jim Brady is sovereign. Over the userï¿½s experience no one has total control. There's tension because there's supposed to be tension." More...

Laying the Newspaper Gently Down to Die: "An industry that won't move until it is certain of days as good as its golden past is effectively dead, from a strategic point of view. Besides, there is an alternative if you don't have the faith or will or courage needed to accept reality and deal. The alternative is to drive the property to a profitable demise." More...

Grokking Woodward: "Woodward and Bernstein of 1972-74 didn't have such access, and this probably influenced--for the better--their view of what Nixon and his men were capable of. Watergate wasn't broken by reporters who had entree to the inner corridors of power. It was two guys on the Metro Desk." More...

Maybe Media Bias Has Become a Dumb Debate: "This here is a post for practically everyone in the game of seizing on media bias and denouncing it, which is part of our popular culture, and of course a loud part of our politics. And this is especially for the 'we're fair and balanced, you're not' crowd, wherever I may have located you." More...

Bill O'Reilly and the Paranoid Style in News: "O'Reilly feeds off his own resentments--the establishment sneering at Inside Edition--and like Howard Beale, the 'mad prophet of the airwaves,' his resentments are enlarged by the medium into public grievances among a mass of Americans unfairly denied voice." More...

Thoughts on the Killing of a Young Correspondent: "Among foreign correspondents, there is a phrase: 'parachuting in.' That's when a reporter drops into foreign territory during an emergency, without much preparation, staying only as long as the story remains big. The high profile people who might parachute in are called Bigfoots in the jargon of network news. The problem with being a Bigfoot, of course, is that it's hard to walk in other people's shoes." More...

The News From Iraq is Not Too Negative. But it is Too Narrow: "The bias charges are getting more serious lately as the stakes rise in Iraq and the election. But there is something lacking in press coverage, and it may be time for wise journalists to assess it. The re-building story has gone missing. And without it, how can we judge the job Bush is doing?." More...

The Abyss of Observation Alone. "There are hidden moral hazards in the ethic of neutral observation and the belief in a professional 'role' that transcends other loyalties. I think there is an abyss to observation alone. And I feel it has something to do with why more people don't trust journalists. They don't trust that abyss." More...

"Find Some New Information and Put it Into Your Post." Standards for Pro-Am Journalism at OffTheBus: "Opinion based on information 'everyone' has is less valuable than opinion journalism based on information that you dug up, originated, or pieced together. So it’s not important to us that contributors keep opinion out. What’s important is that they put new information in. More...

Out in the Great Wide Open: Maybe you heard about the implosion of Wide Open, a political blog started by the Cleveland Plain Dealer with four "outside" voices brought in from the ranks of Ohio bloggers: two left, two right. Twelve points you may not have seen elsewhere." More...

Some Bloggers Meet the Bosses From Big Media: "What capacity for product development do news organizations show? Zip. How are they on nurturing innovation? Terrible. Is there an entreprenurial spirit in newsrooms? No. Do smart young people ever come in and overturn everything? Never." More...

Notes and Comment on BlogHer 2005 "I think the happiest conference goers at BlogHer were probably the newbies, people who want to start blogging or just did. They got a lot of good information and advice. Some of the best information was actually dispensed in response to the fears provoked by blogging, which shouldnï¿½t be avoided, the sages said, but examined, turned around, defused, and creatively shrunk.." More...

Top Ten List: What's Radical About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The weblog comes out of the gift economy, whereas most of today's journalism comes out of the market economy." More...

A Second Top Ten List: What's Conservative About the Weblog Form in Journalism? "The quality of any weblog in journalism depends greatly on its fidelity to age old newsroom commandments like check facts, check links, spell things correctly, be accurate, be timely, quote fairly." More...

Blogging is About Making and Changing Minds: "Sure, weblogs are good for making statements, big and small. But they also force re-statement. Yes, they're opinion forming. But they are equally good at unforming opinion, breaking it down, stretching it out." More...

The Weblog: An Extremely Democratic Form in Journalism "It's pirate radio, legalized; it's public access coming closer to life. Inside the borders of Blogistan (a real place with all the problems of a real place) we're closer to a vision of 'producer democracy' than we are to any of the consumerist views that long ago took hold in the mass media, including much of the journalism presented on that platform." More...

No One Owns Journalism: "And Big Media doesn't entirely own the press, because if it did then the First Amendment, which mentions the press, would belong to Big Media. And it doesn't. These things were always true. The weblog doesn't change them. It just opens up an outlet to the sea. Which in turn extends 'the press' to the desk in the bedroom of the suburban mom, where she blogs at night." More...

Brain Food for BloggerCon: Journalism and Weblogging in Their Corrected Fullness "Blogging is one universe. Its standard unit is the post, its strengths are the link and the low costs of entry, which means lots of voices. Jounalism is another universe. Its standard unit is "the story." Its strengths are in reporting, verification and access-- as in getting your calls returned." More...

Dispatches From the Un-Journalists: "Journalists think good information leads to opinion and argument. It's a logical sequence. Bloggers think that good argument and strong opinion cause people to seek information, an equally logical sequence. What do the bloggers bring to this? My short answer to the press is: everything you have removed."More...

Political Jihad and the American Blog: Chris Satullo Raises the Stakes "Journalists, you can stop worrying about bloggers 'replacing' the traditional news media. We're grist for their mill, says Satullo, a mill that doesn't run without us. Bloggers consume and extend the shelf life of our reporting, and they scrutinize it at a new level of intensity.."More...

Raze Spin Alley, That Strange Creation of the Press: "Spin Alley, an invention of the American press and politicos, shows that the system we have is in certain ways a partnership between the press and insiders in politics. They come together to mount the ritual. An intelligent nation is entitled to ask if the partners are engaged in public service when they bring to life their invention... Alternative thesis: they are in a pact of mutual convenience that serves no intelligible public good." More...

Horse Race Now! Horse Race Tomorrow! Horse Race Forever!: "How is it you know you're the press? Because you have a pass that says PRESS, and people open the gate. The locker room doors admit you. The story must be inside that gate; that's why they give us credentials. We get closer. We tell the fans what's going on. And if this was your logic, Bill James tried to bust it. Fellahs, said he to the baseball press, you have to realize that you are the gate." More...

Psst.... The Press is a Player: "The answer, I think, involves an open secret in political journalism that has been recognized for at least 20 years. But it is never dealt with, probably because the costs of facing it head on seem larger than the light tax on honesty any open secret demands. The secret is this: pssst... the press is a player in the campaign. And even though it knows this, as everyone knows it, the professional code of the journalist contains no instructions in what the press could or should be playing for?" More...

Die, Strategy News: "I think it's a bankrupt form. It serves no clear purpose, has no sensible rationale. The journalists who offer us strategy news do not know what public service they are providing, why they are providing it, for whom it is intended, or how we are supposed to use this strange variety of news."More...

He Said, She Said, We Said: "When journalists avoid drawing open conclusions, they are more vulnerable to charges of covert bias, of having a concealed agenda, of not being up front about their perspective, of unfairly building a case (for, against) while pretending only to report 'what happened.'" More...

If Religion Writers Rode the Campaign Bus: "Maybe irony, backstage peaking and "de-mystify the process" only get you so far, and past that point they explain nothing. Puzzling through the convention story, because I'm heading right into it myself, made me to realize that journalism's contempt for ritual was deeply involved here. Ritual is newsless; therefore it must be meaningless. But is that really true?."More...

Convention Coverage is a Failed Regime and Bloggers Have Their Credentials: "No one knows what a political convention actually is, anymore, or why it takes 15,000 people to report on it. Two successive regimes for making sense of the event have collapsed; a third has not emerged. That's a good starting point for the webloggers credentialed in Boston. No investment in the old regime and its ironizing." More...

Philip Gourevitch: Campaign Reporting as Foreign Beat: "'A presidential election is a like a gigantic moving television show,' he said. It is the extreme opposite of an overlooked event. The show takes place inside a bubble, which is a security perimeter overseen by the Secret Service. If you go outside the bubble for any reason, you become a security risk until you are screened again by hand."More...

What Time is it in Political Journalism? "Adam Gopnik argued ten years ago that the press did not know who it was within politics, or what it stood for. There was a vacuum in journalism where political argument and imagination should be. Now there are signs that this absence of thought is ending." More...

Off the Grid Journalism: “The assignment was straightforward enough,” writes Marjie Lundstrom of the Sacramento Bee, “talk to people.” When a writer dissents from it or departs from it, the master narrative is a very real thing. Here are two examples: one from politics, one from music. More...

Questions and Answers About PressThink "The Web is good for many opposite things. For quick hitting information. For clicking across a field. For talk and interaction. It's also a depth finder, a memory device, a library, an editor. Not to use a weblog for extended analysis (because most users won't pick that option) is Web dumb but media smart. What's strange is that I try to write short, snappy things, but they turn into long ones." More...

Congratulations on this challenging and important project, Jay. I think the recent brouhaha is instructive. The Big Topic is the impact of the Net, its practices, incentives, mores, Cluetrain phenomena, etc., on journalism. Blogs have had an impact that is particularly noticeable, and illustrate/prefigure what can be expected, but they are a subcategory of something larger.

Posted by: Dilys at February 4, 2005 3:30 PM | Permalink

Conundrum: if you make a policy of disclosure, and you're involved in not-yet-public negotiations, and you're faced with a case where both writing about a topical subject (involving the negotiator) AND not writing about it will convey meaning to your audience...is there anything, ethically, that you can do?

or what if you aren't in negotiations yet, but it's conceivable that you might be in future?

mind boggles...back to work...but congratulations.

Posted by: Anna at February 4, 2005 3:45 PM | Permalink

Fristly, Con'grats on being endorsed for the project!!

Secondly, will you follow transparency as you go thru the rigour of your project ?? i.e blog away chapter outlines and engage in converstations, as your project moves forward ??

Posted by: /pd at February 4, 2005 4:01 PM | Permalink

Ah Jay...I expect to see you on The Daily Show some day talking about this book. Its the kind of topic Jon Stewart loves. I hope you publish it before he leaves the show.

Posted by: catrina at February 4, 2005 4:51 PM | Permalink

Congratulations, Jay. It's going to be a tough write, because I suspect chapters will be outdated by the time they're finished, eh?

Where do I get my autographed copy?

Posted by: Terry Heaton at February 4, 2005 5:19 PM | Permalink

Thanks, Matt, Cat & Prak.

Terry: How not to write an instantly outdated book is one of the biggest problems I face, yes.

Pd: I won't be posting chapter outlines, no. Or drafts. I have been using the blog to do the book all along, testing ideas and working out the main lines of thought, but I doubt I will use it in the ways you suggest.

Yes, Anna, the mind boggles.

Dilys: Yes, to what you said. It's the Net. I see the book as being maybe 20 percent about weblogs.

Thanks to all for the kind words.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 4, 2005 7:11 PM | Permalink

Congratulations, Jay! I loved Dan Gillmor's book, and I can hardly wait to read yours. One suggestion from a twice-bitten author: ask _now_ about the promotion budget and plan for your book. It may be too early to get real answers, but it's not too early to ask.

Posted by: Betsy Devine at February 4, 2005 7:23 PM | Permalink

First, congratulations!

Second, have some nice rugolach from the 2nd Ave Deli.

Third, don't worry about the "problem" of the Times being your publisher. Use the opportunity to get inside every door you can at the Times and tell us what they do. Not just the Times the paper, but the Times the media company. Especially the media company. This is the big black hole in public knowledge, every other industry is under constant watch, except the media industry. That's a bug.

Posted by: Dave Winer at February 4, 2005 7:45 PM | Permalink

Terrific, Jay... Whatever you do, keep Bill's name in the title! Oh... and in the interest of interactive media and the continuing conversation, lean on the publisher to print it with wide margins for discussion. (Seriously. There's at least one good book that I won't use in class because the pages are so poorly designed for student use.)

Best wishes on the project.

Posted by: Bob Stepno at February 4, 2005 7:47 PM | Permalink

Prof. Rosen,

I will just echo others' well wishes here, as I am mostly a lurker on this site, and very rarely comment on any of the others I read for that matter. Yes, it is a work conflict, but... congratulations anyhow and best of luck.

By the way, this comment section looks like a Murderers' Row of enlightened media people. Rather intimidating, to me anyhow.

I'm sure the finished text wil be as mentally challenging and rewarding as this blog is and has been to me. I can't always keep up, but I try.

Mark

Posted by: Mark at February 4, 2005 9:14 PM | Permalink

And just the other day I was thinking how great it would be to have all your posts of the last, say, 18 months in print.

Sight unseen, I plan to use it as a textbook in the media courses I teach.

Congratulations not just on the book, but of driving so much of what so many of us are thinking about when it comes to the future of media.

Posted by: Mark Hamilton at February 4, 2005 9:45 PM | Permalink

Thanks, Dave; I'm not all that worried about the conflicts, but I did want to explain it thoroughly at least once. Now I have a url to point to when it comes up again.

Betsy: I did ask quite a few questions about publicity and such. The trouble is I can do way more for myself than, say, buying a few ads would do for the book. The media interest will be there; Holt knows that.

I am battling a perception that a.) media books don't sell, even though they generate a lot of interest among the chattering classes, and b.) a blogger is likely to have given away for free what the book publisher is asking people to buy. Fairly or unfairly, that is what I was up against.

I haven't figured out how to attack this yet. Suggestions welcome.

Rebecca: your post was lovely. Thanks.

Bob: I will definitely make that point about the margins; thanks. I know exactly what you mean. If the page is too crowded, I won't assign the book.

First Mark: it might surprise you to know that people who participate in the way you do are the mainstays of any blog like mine. Whom do you think all these comments are for? The lurkers! You speak for many PressThink readers, is what I'm trying to say. There are lots who never say a thing, and there's no reason they should until they want to.

Mark Hamilton: you are most kind.

Right now the puzzle I'm trying to solve is how not to write a book that grows "dated " quickly. Lots of different answers to that one. Tell a great story, with memorable characters-- that's one. Others?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 4, 2005 11:09 PM | Permalink

"Amusing Ourselves To Death" by former nyu professor Neil Postman had a great impact on my thinking as an undergraduate. heres hoping your output will be equally engaging and useful.

but really, for "authentic" rugalach one must go to Gertel's on Hester.

Posted by: drat fink at February 5, 2005 10:01 AM | Permalink

Congrats Jay. I know your book is going to be great.

btw, the name of Dan's book is "We the Media". he wrote the foreward to our lengthy paper for API on the same subject, "We Media."

Posted by: Shayne Bowman at February 5, 2005 12:30 PM | Permalink

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends and the most patient of teachers.
- Charles W. Elliot

We need great teachers, desperate wives or not!

Posted by: Jozef Imrich at February 6, 2005 5:09 AM | Permalink

Which of course is eminently doable, even if only as a DIY via something like Cafepress or Lulu (I use the latter).

Posted by: The One True b!X at February 6, 2005 6:14 AM | Permalink

Thanks, Kevin. I am very happy with ICM; without Kate Lee I would not have gotten this contract.

Patterico: I said above that I am not planning to put a draft online. I'm not convinced that it's a good idea for this project, although for other books it works out just fine. I feel there has to be a sense of occasion about a book like mine, and posting chapters defeats that. However, I will be testing out, at PressThink, ideas that will be in the book. Of course that's been happening all along.

Thanks, Jozef. I like Media Dragon.

bix: you are a treasure.

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 6, 2005 5:35 PM | Permalink

Jay, add one more hosannah (if hosannahs can be singular) to the chorus. One of the most encouraging developments in journalism I've seen in many a year is the ascendance of practitioner/critics such as you, Dan Gillmor, Tim Porter and others struggling to find journalism's soul. A decade back I might have thought this quixotic. Now I'm more optimistic.

Posted by: Roger Karraker at February 6, 2005 9:09 PM | Permalink

Congrats, Jay. If you'd like some thoughts about how to set up a wiki or reader feedback loop on your blog as you begin writing the book, let me know.

Posted by: JD Lasica at February 7, 2005 7:27 PM | Permalink

Roger: I'm more optimistic than I was in '95, as well. There is a greater recognition of problems today, and the Net is forcing innovation.

JD: I may take you up on that. How did it work with Darknet?

Posted by: Jay Rosen at February 8, 2005 9:05 AM | Permalink

congrats uncle. sheesh, i had to find out on your blog! not going to title it: "what are bloggers for?" :P glad to see you are getting published again. looking forward to getting a copy, i wont make you sign it.

Posted by: juls at February 9, 2005 3:45 PM | Permalink