Very pleasing review of the journalism text book I coauthored with Steve Hill
Book review: Online journalism: The essential guide
Steve Hill and Paul Lashmar, Online journalism: The essential guide. London: Sage, 2014. 304 pp. ISBN 978-1-4462-0734-5.
Lily Canter, Sheffield Hallam University, UK.
Such is the nature of online journalism that every time a new book on the subject is published it is immediately out of date. It is also a slightly awkward contradiction to have a printed tome, demonstrating the skills and knowledge required to become a successful online journalist.
The static black-and-white pages (printing in monochrome itself seems anachronistic) contain no videos, no hyperlinks, no comment threads and none of the other interactive, participatory and multimedia elements that come with Web and Internet-based news. Yet this is something that the authors wisely acknowledge from the start and it would be wrong to claim that the book lacks interactivity. As well as the increasingly common companion website (view site), the book contains QR codes throughout the text, which link to relevant pages on the website and can transport the reader there directly via a smartphone or tablet.
Whether a gimmick or a useful tool it sets the tone of the book, which readily acknowledges that the traditional world of static publishing has undergone fundamental change. Written in a chatty and informal style the textbook is easily accessible to students (or ‘early career journalists’ as they are referred to in the introduction) and . . .
paullashmar.com 