Brian Carroll Writing for Digital Media. New York, NY: Routledge, 20 1 0. 313 pp.Finding a good text for an journalism course can be a challenge. While discussions of Web technology and software are, of course, key parts of producing digital content, they can easily squeeze out room for consideration of the main point: writing. Some texts, therefore, are left discussing itself in two chapters, one called something such as online writing and the other linking.Such is not the case in Carroll's book. This well-researched and thoughtfully organized work honors the craft of through its own production.The book is presented in three sections. Part I begins with an excellent examination of good and the foundations of good journalistic form. It then introduces students to the differences between reading content in print versus digital form and why digital necessitates considerations of scanning, readability, and search for the writer. The second chapter ends with a brief introduction to HTML, XHTML, and CSS.Part II, chapters 3 through 6, segues into a deeper presentation on planning and mapping news sites; yet style remains the key. The third chapter concludes by examining the visual style of three well-known sites, C/Net, Razorfish, and Google, and recommends the overlooked practice of storyboarding to plan clean page design. Consideration of the visual, again, is tied into the concept of reader usability, which is as it should be for a text.Chapter 4 centers around the importance of heads, subheads, and links; following a brief discussion of text types, the chapter ends with the practice of chunking and illustrates how it was used in two case studies.Chapter 5 brings up one criticism: its focus on designing news sites and pages might easily have been incorporated into chapter 3. Instead, the text seems to bog down somewhat with considerations of balance, contrast, and unity. For example, the text's explanation of style guides might confuse students because it comes so close at times to mixing editorial style guidelines (such as the AP's) with coding guides or software terminology. When presenting file names, use only lowercase letters. Examples: florence.wmv . (p. 113).Or consider this: As examples, here are two terms and their style explained from Wired's usage book: FDDI: Pronounced 'fiddy' and standing in for 'fiber distributed data interface,' this fiberbased network architecture offers a faster and more dependable alternative to ether or Token Ring. (It transmits at 1 OO Mbits per second over LANs and MANs.) Of course, with gigabit Ethernet on the horizon, the future of FDDI looks bleak' (p. 113).So would an undergraduate's expression, I can imagine.Chapter 6 rights its way again with important advice on editing. Not only is editing given its due, which is rare in other texts, but Carroll presents step-by-step methods students can use in their editing attempts.Part III, chapters 7 through 1 1 , covers the many different contexts in which has become a valuable skill - through blogging, citizen journalism, and corporate communication - and concludes with a comprehensive and well-written summary of key legal concepts that impact writers. An Afterword reflects upon the core values in journalism and helps students realize they are the same as those in print journalism: accuracy, transparency, fairness, and independence. …