Mediactive

For chapter drafts so far, click here.

Brief outline below:

1. The past half-century has seen the rise of media monopolies and oligopolies, and a time when consumers were encouraged to sit back and accept what they were being told. The new century has brought a democratization of media. This has led to the financial unraveling of news organizations and a seemingly infinite variety of emerging news sources, including the social media that are about what friends and colleagues tell each other. It was always a bad idea to be a passive consumer, even when there was little choice; now we can’t afford to be passive in the face of uncertainty about our information sources amid society’s vast challenges. We need to become active users of media: hands-on consumers and creators — not just because it’s good for society but also because we’ll be better off individually, and because it’s satisfying and, sometimes, fun.

2. Principles of Media Consumption: We lay out the principles in depth, explaining why they matter and how they can be applied.
* Be Skeptical
* Exercise Judgement
* Open Your Mind
* Keep Asking Questions
* Learn Media Techniques

3. Tools and techniques for exercising skeptcism, using judgement and following the principles listed in Chapter 1. We look at everything from basic techniques to somewhat more specific technologies that can help. I’m avoiding too much technology that will be obsolete in a couple of years, however.

4. Prinicples of Media Creation: Mirroring Chapter 1, we explain why even active consumers can go further.
* Be Thorough
* Get it Right
* Insist on Fairness
* Think Independently
* Be Transparent, Demand Tranparency

5. Tools for creating media, and techniques for being more trusted.

6. Why everyone needs to be a publisher about him/herself: If you don’t define yourself, others will define you in this increasingly public world. How to create and maintain your Web presence is the most essential element of this chapter, complete with a discussion of why you can’t just create a Facebook or Google or MySpace page and think that’s enough, because when you do that they own who you are and you do not.

7. Why journalism still matters: This is about the reasons we need to keep journalism alive as a concept and a practice, even as the business of journalism changes unalterably. We’ll look at the things traditional media organizations could still do to survive; what some new orgs are doing to experiment our way to the future; and how the rest of us are joining the larger ecosystem in more intriguing ways. There will be a key section on methods and best practices for people who aren’t journalists but who may occasionally commit a random act of journalism, which is to say almost everyone. Also: 22 rules for any news organization.

8. Law and Norms: Freedom of speech has always come with caveats. What you need to know (or at least where to start) to protect yourself in this new media-creator’s world. Equally important, we need to recognize that in a media-saturated world our societal norms need to change, because the law can’t deal with some situations. In particular, we need to cut each other a lot more slack about the occasionally foolish things we say and do, given that we or someone else may be creating media that will ensure those foolish acts live on.

9. Why parents and teachers need to understand all this, and how they can push educational institutions to do a better job. This is a chapter looking at “media literacy” of the past and explaining why the very notion needs updating in a critical way. One recommendation will be to teach (and practice) “Journalism 101″ starting at a young age, expanding on the idea’s reach as students get older, because journalism — or whatever we decide to call it — is all about the most important skill we can impart to our children: critical thinking. This chapter includes a section on how journalism education, which has tended to be even more retrograde than the journalism business, should become leaders in this arena — and why that will ensure their survival. Also: Why traditional news organizations should make media education a priority, and how they can do it. This chapter will expand on the necessity of transparency.

10. A look ahead: What tools and techniques need to be invented, or perfected, so that we’ll have the trusted information ecosystem we need? They include human-machine reputation systems; aggregators that give humans more say in what’s reliable; and much more. Also: Why entrepreneurship is a key to the future of journalism and all media.

11. Recap and summary, and call to action.

Epilog: Why we did this book in this way. What is a book in this digital world, anyway?