How to Use the Site
In the pre-digital world, writing a book was a linear process. It began with the author collecting material and then editing it into a coherent structure that could be printed, bound and read as a “book,” with a beginning and an end. Much of the information that the author collected ended up on the cutting room floor, and, depending on the subject matter, the recommendations and conclusions on the printed page became dated.
The Internet frees publishers and writers to work on multiple platforms simultaneously. On a website such as this, for example, authors can interact with readers, update information, provide step-by-step instruction on a specific topic, and offer expanded interviews with main characters.
This free companion site to Saving Community Journalism is designed for both publishers and professors – those who are attempting either to guide their news organizations through disruptive times or to instruct tomorrow’s media leaders on how they can reinvent community journalism for the digital era. There are four main sections:
Get Started consists of five lessons on how to formulate and implement a strategy in a news organization. It has accompanying exercises that can be done individually, or as a group. The first three lessons lay out the steps in a strategy process. The other two lessons expand on the discussion in Chapter Eight of Saving Community Journalism, titled “The Far-Reaching Implications,” and consider some of the strategic choices confronting large metropolitan papers and digital start-ups.
Dig Deeper offers examples of how some of the most innovative community news organizations featured in Saving Community Journalism are reinventing both strong local journalism and the business models that will support it in the digital age. There are also in-depth interviews with publishers, editors and industry experts, explaining why they recommend a certain strategy or tactic.
Learn More provides guidance on additional resources that you can consult. Many of these sources were referenced in the book. This section highlights the relevant strategic insights by topic – strategy formulation or consumer behavior, for example.
Stay Up-To-Date gives you a chance to interact with the author and learn what’s new. Have suggestions for improving the site? Then go to the heading in this section titled “Questions and Suggestions” and let us know.
Be sure to also check out Worth Considering which offers a sampling of some of the most provocative insights from the book. Any of these quotes would be good conversation starters for a strategy session.
In addition, there is a separate section Just for Educators, which will include a link to a free multimedia case study that takes you behind the scenes, as a Pulitzer-Prize-winning small town paper attempts to change with the times.
As this site illustrates, publishing is no longer a linear process, with a beginning and an end. It is, in fact, a very dynamic one – for books, as well as newspapers.