Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 7, 1994 TAG: 9411080043
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
So up-to-date, in fact, that even O.J. Simpson's mid-June Bronco ride made the final chapter. Fishwick, Virginia Tech's pop culture guru, recognizes a tectonic shift in his field when he sees it on the tube, especially when it's rolling slowly down an L.A. freeway.
Back home in New York that night, Fishwick's latest editor, Nancy Surridge, had turned to her husband.
"You know, I have an author who's going to want to put that in his book," she said.
She was right. And he did, thanks to the magic of a new textbook niche that weds emerging technology with the dogged survival instincts of the print media.
Fishwick's new book, "Go, and Catch a Falling Star," is one of the first in a new area of textbook publishing. The book is something between a magazine and a hardback - and not the inevitable computer database, Fishwick happily reports.
"Print is the medium of continuity," says Fishwick, a former Washington & Lee University professor who helped inspire pioneering writer Tom Wolfe. "We think we're through with print, but we're not."
Surridge co-directs American Heritage Custom Publishing, a 2-year-old offshoot of Forbes Inc. that has jumped into the new quick-turnaround textbook market with the aid of desktop publishing technology. She spoke excitedly last week about Fishwick's revisions for his second-semester class, to be shipped in mid-December with an update on the Simpson trial.
"We know publishers aren't updating books quickly enough, and we know professors want to keep current," she said.
Fishwick's is one of only a few new textbooks in the country created with desktop publishing software. Selling for $28.80 in the University Bookstore, it's a little on the steep side - but the cost should go down as more professors buy it for their classes, Surridge said.
At the moment, four professors at four other universities are using Fishwick's book.
The idea is to allow professors to write books that include exactly what they want their students to learn. And while Fishwick is pleased that this is one innovation that does not require students to spend time at a computer, his editor admits that the books could someday be produced on floppy discs or CD-ROMs.
Still, she's very practical about it all.
"Even though more and more technology is coming on campus, reading a book off a screen is a drag," Surridge said. "Anyone who's really had to do extensive reading off a screen knows that."
To a large extent, the new type of book replaces the usual package of copied articles and essays that professors often distribute to supplement outdated texts.
"It's current, and it's easier to keep hold of than a bunch of handouts," one of Fishwick's students, Beth Pruden, said.
Added student Rob Gentry: "In other textbooks, you are presented a situation, or you're presented a formula or a pattern you follow to accomplish something. You do it repetitively, and you learn it. This textbook is more of a guidebook. It's really more of a point to start a discussion."
And communications students engage in their share of discussions on current events.
Fishwick got the contract to do his new book last spring, after Surridge read a quote from Fishwick - one of the founding fathers of pop culture study - in a USA Today article about radio talk-show star Howard Stern's book, "Private Parts." She knew right away that Fishwick's area of expertise lent itself to quick-turnaround manuscripts, so she called him.
That was in April or May. Most of the manuscript had been turned in by mid-June.
Then came the night of June 17. It proved an auspicious one for Americans of many stripes: Lawyers, journalists, criminologists, police, pundits, gossips. But imagine how O.J.'s surrender must have looked to a man as attuned to the mass media as Fishwick.
"I'd been out of town," recalled Fishwick. "I came in about 10:30, turned on the TV. There was Dan Rather, Connie Chung, Peter Jennings. And they were saying, 'Well, we think it's O.J. Simpson in the car.' And I thought, 'What the hell?' They were totally unrehearsed.
"And I realized: TV had become reality."
Voila. Within a week, his discourse on the topic also became a reality - one his students could read in his custom-designed text.
by CNB