The Next Generation of Publishing
The publishing industry is at a tipping point. Since the advent of the printing press, the owners of the press have held all the power. Artists, authors and musicians have long been at the mercy of the whims of industry. Modern technology gives us the potential to disrupt this power balance, and remove industrial publishers as gatekeepers between producers and consumers of art, literature, news and music.
New Deal Media is focused on making these disruptive technologies readily available and easy to use for content creators. With decades of combined experience in professional journalism and commercial software development, we are developing and integrating tools to support citizen journalism, blogging, hosting and now book publishing and distribution.
Books
In 2011, New Deal Media entered the realm of book publishing, with Nancy Ellen Row’s novel That’s Not It, available in paperback (ISBN-13 978-1466488632) as well as for Kindle
In August 2013, How Are You Sugar? (ISBN-13 978-0984700424), The Life, Times, and Recipes of Margie Ellen Dorton was released.
We are developing tools to remove barriers between authors and their audiences, based on free, open source software. These tools will streamline the publishing process for authors, and enable simple conversion and formatting of manuscripts for print and all common eBook formats. Further development will leverage existing distribution networks to automatically make New Deal Media books available to a variety of retail outlets, from local, independent book sellers to Amazon.
Citizen Journalism
New Deal Media pioneered the practice of “beat blogging” with PPS Equity (2008-2010), pushing the practice of beat reporting by being intimately involved with the arc of the stories covered and effectively using new media to drive the narrative toward outcomes benefiting the greater common good.
PPS Equity consistently led the pack in reporting on educational equity issues in Portland. The Oregonian, Willamette Week, the Portland Tribune, and other Portland media outlets frequently relied on PPS Equity as a source for their own reporting.
Blogs
Wacky Mommy, New Deal Media’s flagship blog, first went online in 2005, and it’s been updated continuously ever since. Through the heyday of blogs and into the Facebook era, Wacky Mommy has continued to attract readers in the Portland metro area and around the world by serving up a healthy daily dose of book reviews, recipes, advice, and domestic life, all seasoned with a generous dash of political wit and wisdom.
More Hockey, Less War is a “slow blog” in publication since 2006. There’s not much hockey talk there, but lots of Portland area politics, photography, media and culture critique, and even some recipes once in a while.
As a public service, New Deal Media has developed and hosted blogs for labor unions, school board candidates, PTAs, activist groups and more.
Technology
New Deal Media is committed to using, integrating and extending free (as in speech) software. We’re a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) shop. Our server software stack starts with the GNU/Linux operating system and tools (openSUSE, Debian and Ubuntu distributions), the Apache Web server with PHP, and the MySQL database, with the WordPress publishing platform running on top. We also run GNU/Liunx on the desktop, and use OpenOffice.org for word processing and formatting and GIMP for graphic image processing.
978-0984700400