By: Wayne Robins The Associated Press, upon whose stylebook much of civilization depends, will be releasing "The Associated Press Guide to Internet Research and Reporting" in February to apply some of its rules of order to the online world. The 176-page book, edited by Norm Goldstein, headman of the offline "AP Stylebook," offers more than grammar, usage, and punctuation law. The guide will cover researching, fact checking, citations, and copyright information.
The $15 paperback will be published by Perseus Books. The tone, at least in the introductory chapters, is informative yet wry, making allusions to the Internet's use of hypertext, the central nervous system of the Web, and to hypertension, the nervous condition of editors from the invention of the telephone and Teletype to the present day.
The introduction is also fascinating in its recollection of the earliest days of computers and news organizations: The AP used its first computers, IBM 1620s, in the early 1960s to run stock and financial data.
The new book explains how to use what it calls "The World's Best Library" with chapters about searching the Web, listservs and newsgroups, and computer-assisted reporting. As the book says, the basic rules of accuracy, clarity, concision, fairness, and speed remain: "Journalism hasn't changed; only the tools have."
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