A five-week book club on 'Making the shift to service'
One page a day, through pixel-world gatherings on Tuesdays, starting Nov. 10.
Most newsrooms are built to publish stories, newsletters, videos and explainers. Around that content sits the product: the app, the signup, the paywall.
What keeps people coming back is the service: the promise you make and keep, how people find you, what happens when something breaks, and whether they would miss you if you were gone.
Making the shift to service is our new workbook for journalists, media entrepreneurs and other information producers, solo or on a team, who want to move from producing content to designing an information service people depend on.
It takes five weeks: one page each weekday, five to ten minutes a page. First you learn to see the exchange behind any service. Then you turn that eye on your own work, then on one real person. Finally you try something small and learn from it.
We’re running a virtual book club on gather.town this November and December to work through it with others applying these ideas in their own work. We meet on five Tuesdays, for 60 to 90 minutes each: Nov. 10 and 17, and Dec. 1, 8 and 15. Pick whichever time suits you, wherever you are:
- Americas: 9 am Pacific / 12 pm New York
- Europe, Asia and Pacific: 10 am Central Europe / 5 pm Hong Kong / 8 pm Sydney
Register below. Every Friday we confirm new registrations and send a free digital copy of the workbook, a link to our space and calendar invites. Sponsored seats are limited, so don’t wait.
If you’re in Chicago for the News Product Alliance Summit, join us for a small launch breakfast on the morning of Thursday, Oct. 22: a physical copy, a cappuccino and some camaraderie. Space is limited, so please RSVP.
This workbook and book club exist thanks to The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, whose support carried the work from a single question at the 2025 News Philanthropy Summit to newsrooms across five continents.
We’re also grateful to Piper Lyman of StudioPiper, who gave the book its shape, its warmth and its magpies.
The Service Desk is Gazzetta’s applied service design practice for civic media.
You just read about the Service Desk’s book club.
- Take the 5-min gut-check test on your publishing strategy.
- Read about what we do and how we work.
- Read why this project is no longer called Audience Help Desk.
- Questions? Suggestions? Ideas? servicedesk@gazzetta.xyz