Tag Archives: Jeff Jarvis

Democracy and the media go together like…

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Ditchley ParkLike Jeff Jar­vis, Charlie Beck­ett, and Richard Sam­brook, I too was at Ditch­ley recently for a con­fer­ence on the media and demo­cracy. Present com­pany excep­ted, it brought together a fas­cin­at­ing and lively group of people (not always the case at conferences).

Sir Jeremy Green­stock, formerly Britain’s man at the UN and in Iraq (and someone who speaks in per­fect para­graphs), gives his impres­sions below (bold, ital­ics, and broken paras are me).

For the record, I’m more pess­im­istic about demo­cracy than about journ­al­ism — but I also think Google — the acci­dental mono­pol­ist — should step up to the plate and fund some inde­pend­ent con­tent resource (listen — that’s the sound of me not hold­ing my breath). Con­tinue read­ing →

What would Jeff do?

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In case you hap­pen to be a journ­al­ist and Jeff Jar­vis still has you think­ing that news­pa­per prob­lems are your fault, take a look at the New York Times from July, 1980 (and if you like catchy head­lines, they don’t come much catch­ier than this):

First U.S. Exper­i­ments in Elec­tronic News­pa­pers Begin in Two Com­munit­ies; 13 News­pa­pers to Be Added The Need for News­pa­pers A Com­mu­nic­a­tions Devel­op­ment Tele­phone, Cable and Air­waves A Warn­ing on Reg­u­la­tion [pay access]. Con­tinue read­ing →

The teller not the tale: link based journalism and rewrites

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McDonalds by DennisWhat value do news­pa­pers add to inform­a­tion? A couple of days ago, I book­marked this piece on product place­ment, from the New York Times. Basic­ally, it’s about cof­fee cups appear­ing on the desk dur­ing a local morn­ing news show in Las Vegas.

The Las Vegas Sun repor­ted it first on Monday:

Oooooooh, they’re call­ing out your name.

Two cups of McDonald’s iced cof­fee (BUY!) sit on the Fox 5 TV news desk, a punch-you-in-the-face product place­ment (BUY!) to chase down your morn­ing news.

Quoted? Fox 5 news dir­ector, Adam Brad­shaw, and Kelly McBride of the journ­al­ism eth­ics outi­fit, Poynter. The New York Times hat tips the Las Vegas Sun, ditches the breezy style — and the line that the cof­fee and ice cubes are fake — and clocks up eight quoted sources in under a thou­sand words. Con­tinue read­ing →

Newspapers and Google: Stockholm syndrome

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Jeff Jar­vis pitches up this idea:

What if news­pa­pers handed over much of their work to Google? Edward [Rous­sel of the Tele­graph] reasoned that Google already is the key dis­trib­utor online. He said that Google is great at tech­no­logy and news­pa­pers aren’t and for the future, where are the best tech­no­lo­gists going to go? Google.

Google is also bril­liant at selling ads and Edward even wondered where the best sales tal­ent would go in the future: there or a paper? So why not hand over those seg­ments of the busi­ness to Google and con­cen­trate on what a news­pa­per should do: journalism?

I don’t dis­agree with the ana­lysis, but I can point out the prob­lems. Most of my life has been spent on the sup­ply side of journ­al­ism in tele­vi­sion news. TV news never saw the ad rev­en­ues from its pro­grammes — so man­aging was all cost con­trol, all the time.

That’s what hand­ing over those “seg­ments of the busi­ness” means. You don’t gain free­dom to con­cen­trate on journ­al­ism. You lose whatever fin­an­cial lever­age you had left, and get used to cut­ting year in, year out.

Whilst news­pa­pers still have ground, they shouldn’t — and won’t — rush to give it up. But are they on the slide? You bet.