Today’s to do: Save the World


My Carnival of Journalism pal Charlie Beckett has a new book, “SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World” (published by Blackwell books on May 20th). I haven’t read it, but it hones in on a powerful idea for journalism, what Beckett is calling “network journalism.”

Here’s the PR blurb:

SuperMedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save The World (Published by Blackwell books on May 20th) is a passionate and controversial defence of the social value of journalism. But it argues that the news media must be transformed in to ‘Networked Journalism’ that allows the public much more power and participation. It outlines how forces such as new technology are destroying old media forms around the world. And it gives international examples of how new media will change the way that we report on the big issues such as politics, terror, Development and climate change.

SuperMedia is a riposte to the pessimism of Nick Davies’ Flat Earth News but it is also a realistic manifesto for how the virtues and the business of traditional journalism can be reborn.

It makes a provocative case for a new approach to the ethics and practice of news production and describes how media diversity and literacy must be reinvented.

You can read hefty chunks from SuperMedia here.

More info is here.