It’s accepted wisdom in the news tribe that journalism is storytelling. They have become synonymous. Journalists are storytellers. I hear that over and over again, especially in discussions of journalism education, and when I do I see everyone’s head nod. Lately, I’m not necessarily nodding.
I’m not so sure [...]
I’m delighted to see CNN investing in Outside.in – and in local and in the notion of distributed, scalable networks of content. AOL, Yahoo, MSNBC, NBC, ABC, and other big guys are investing in local. But local doesn’t need big guys to succeed and Outside.in is the proof: it [...]
Xark raised fair and unfair criticism of our work at the New Business Models for News Project. I’ll respond:
Xarc’s Dan Conover says that the models we presented look a lot like present models, only different. Fair and true. Our goal was to look at what news in a [...]
There’s one thing that Rupert Murdoch, Arianna Huffington, Steve Brill, and I agreed on yesterday – and and there’s probably nothing else one can imagine this group would ever find consensus around. At the two-day Federal Trade Commission “workshop” (read: hearing) that asked how journalism will “survive” (their word) [...]
Tweet: Compare/contrast Rupert Murdoch on the internet (and me) then and now.
In 2005, Rupert Murdoch gave a rousing speech to the American Society of Newspapers Editors calling on them to listen to digital natives. Yesterday, his deputy, Les Hinton, gave a speech to the World Association of Newspapers in India [...]
Relevant to today’s FTC workshops (read: hearings) on the “survival” (their word… I would have said “rebirth:) of journalism in the internet age, Geoffrey Cowan and David Westphal issue a good set of principles for government involvement (read: meddling or support):
First and foremost, do no harm. A cycle [...]
Tweet: What does the post-page, post-site, post-media media world look like? @stephenfry, that’s what.
The next phase of media, I’ve been thinking, will be after the page and after the site. Media can’t expect us to go to it all the time. Media has to come to us. Media must [...]
Tweet: The new divide in media is walled v. open. Here’s why I think walls are bad for the builders and us all.
In the discussion about news, there’s always a divide – because news loves divides. The splits have been old v. new, MSM v. blogs, professional v. amateur, [...]
Tweet: Rupert has balls. Well, he used to.
That’s the essence of Murdoch: balls. It’s the essence of the culture of News Corp., which I learned from working there (at TV Guide): Australian macho seat-of-the-pants instant decision making.
That is the secret to Murdoch’s success. It is also the secret [...]
Tweet: Worthless readers. And what to do about Murdoch et al’s whining about them.
One response publishers make to my argument that Google drives value to them and their content in the link economy is that the readers Google sends are worthless.
Worthless readers. WIliam Randolph Hearst, Joseph Pulitzer, [...]
Companies have stupid fetishes about their names. Tribune Company isn’t The Tribune Company, it’s Tribune Company – no damned “the.” Time Inc. isn’t Time, Inc., we were informed when I worked there, it’s Time Inc. In a corporate dining room, there used to be a memo from one of the [...]
I’ve had a fair number of press calls on the Murdoch/Bing sillliness and here are the points I’ve been making:
Were Bing to pay News Corp. to drop Google, it would be a double-play in Google’s favor: Microsoft would lose money and gain little. News Corp. would lose traffic, shifting away [...]
(I double-posted the Murdoch Madness post but won’t kill this entirely because there are comments now attached….)
[...]Here’s my talk on CUNY’s New Business Models for News at our summit in New York:
Jeff Jarvis on New Business Models for News 2009 from CUNY Grad School of Journalism on Vimeo.
And here’s my latest Prezi:
[...]On today’s On Point, Michael Wolff, Steve Brill, and I talked about Murdoch and Google and the show’s blog quoted me thusly:
But News Corp isn’t the only one making the mistake here. I think the mistake that Google has made in this – and I’m an admirer of [...]
Tweet: A tweet paraphrased my link-economy line and showed me I’ve been saying more than I thought I have. **
In Twitter today, one @rpaskin paraphrased something I’ve been saying – and said again in my talk at Web 2.0 Expo Tuesday (generously covered in that link by Aneta [...]
I had the privilege of being on This Week in Tech with Leo Laporte, John Dvorak, and Baratunde Thurston right after appearing on This Week in Google with the aforementioned Leo, Gina Trapani, and Mary Hodder. Much fun.
[...]Tweet: How bankruptcy can help a newspaper get theah from heah. Don’t squander it. **
I fear that Tribune Company – and other newspaper companies – will come out of bankruptcy having squandered the opportunity it presents to rebuild from the ground up.
At last! A week of videos comes to an end. Here are the last of the videos from the aborted v-book edition of What Would Google Do?:
Here I ask how Googley headhunters would operate:
And, finally, a video from Oxford about the future of the university:
[...]And they never end: Here’s the sixth day of videos from the aborted v-book edition of What Would Google Do?:
A touch dated now, here’s a video I made on my Flip a year ago arguing that it was the Googley way to do video because it serves the [...]
And they never end: Here’s the fifth day of videos from the aborted v-book edition of What Would Google Do?:
First, a lesson in turning a challenge into an opportunity from the German publishers of the Wikipedia Lexicon:
This one’s probably not for you. It was intended as an appendix [...]
At yesterday’s New Business Models for (Local) News summit at CUNY, I ran what I called a reverse panel with big media folks – NY Times, Washington Post, Gannett, Star-Ledger, Impremedia, Politico – sitting up front but ordered to listen to the wishes and needs of the [...]
Sick of me yet? There’s more to come. Here are two more videos from the aborted v-book edition of What Would Google Do?:
An argument to connect even the customers of products into their own instant communities so they can share what they know (attn: GaryVee):
And how to win [...]
Last week, I said that the future of news is entrepreneurial (not institutional). Today, a sequel: The future of business is in ecosystems (not conglomerates or industries).
At the Foursquare conference last week, I was struck by the miss-by-a-mile worldviews held by the chiefs of big, old conglomerates and [...]
Another two videos from the aborted v-book edition of What Would Google Do?:
In this, I recreate at my whiteboard slides some of you have seen about a process v product view of our emerging world:
And introducing Schwagman:
[...]Yesterday, I threatened you with a stream of videos that were supposed to be in a v-book edition of What Would Google Do?. Here are two more.
First, a discussion about beta-think – releasing products as betas to learn and collaborate – and the end of the myth of [...]
In addition to What Would Google Do? the book, the ebook, the Kindle book, the audio book, the video, and the PowerPoint, we were planning to release a so-called V-book with videos interspersed throughout the digital text. Never happened. So in a bald effort to [...]
Hey, Verizon (& Google & Apple & Dell & BestBuy….).
I want to try the Droid but I am already in indentured servitude to AT&T for my iPhone (and have no particular desire to lose it). As much of a gadget geek as I am (I’m no Leo Laporte – [...]
Here in a bit more friendly video format is the keynote I gave to the Munich Media Days (in English) a week ago, which I linked to earlier. I decided to be blunt and tough and tell them I was worried about the protectionist talk I’ve been hearing from Germany [...]
I’m fretting about forgetting things, not just because I’m getting older (on top of middle-aged surgery and its inconveniences and a dicky ticker I now have sciatica; I am a parody of age). I’m fretting about us all forgetting things because we’re using Twitter.
Twitter is temporary. Streams [...]
Podcasts, podcasts, everywhere…..
This month’s MediaTalkUSA for the Guardian is up with guests Jay Rosen of NYU and Michael Tomasky of the Guardian. We talk about Politico’s rear-guard action against the Washington Post with its new local service; the election; the White House and Fox; and government support of journalism. [...]
The future of news is entrepreneurial.
There’s a lot in that statement. It says: The future of news is not institutional… The news of tomorrow has yet to be built…. The structure – the ecosystem – of news will not be dominated by a few corporations but likely will be [...]
Actually, I already voted for Chris Daggett. Sent in my absentee ballot the other day.
To my New Jersey friends, I urge you to take the pledge, vote for Daggett, and declare independence from the corrupt and incompetent party politics of this state.
I’m a life-long Democrat but this time, [...]
Kai Diekmann, the head of Bild, the gigantic German newspaper, is a journalistic celebrity of a sort we don’t have here: utterly charming, lustily egotistical, brashly opinionated, infuriating to those he infuriates (a friend of mine calls him Germany’s Roger Ailes), beloved to his fans, witty, quick, clever, innovative, [...]
We just got a glimpse of Howard Stern’s next life, I think. I was running errands today listening to a repeat of the show from this week when I heard Stern talk with a caller about what he could do on the internet. Thanks to my handy Sirius Satellite radio, [...]
My prostate cancer was caught with multiple PSA tests that weren’t out of the normal range but that were rising fast. That led to a biopsy, which found cancer in 1 of 12 samples, meaning it apparently was caught early. That led to surgery, which confirmed my malignancy but [...]
Before reaching their dangerous conclusion – recommending government supported journalism in a report called the Reconstruction of American Journalism – former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie and Columbia journalism prof Michael Schudson make some basic and, I believe, profoundly mistaken assumptions, namely: “That journalism is now at risk, [...]
(Note: I’m going to link to the Financial Times three times in this post. You’re allowed two views a month at FT.com before being forced to register. If you’re conserving, I suggest you read the second two FT links.)
The Financial Times’ John Gapper gave my book a bad review [...]
This morning, I walked up the street to my neighbor Chris Daggett’s house and recorded this video about his independent race for governor in New Jersey, drawing comparisons between his campaign and Jesse Ventura’s. At this stage in the campaign, Ventura was polling 15%; Daggett’s latest numbers have him at [...]
Now that The New York Times Company has decided not to sell the Boston Globe, DailyDeal.com wonders whether the company should convert Boston to a hyperlocal-based business.
Well, our Knight Foundation-funded New Business Models for News can be a roadmap. Indeed, the 5-million-person hypothetical market we worked on [...]
Two events of recent days underscore for me how old-media executives are not comprehending the collaboration economy: how it adds value, how it creates efficiency, how it operates under new currencies.
Add this to the other blind spots these old media powers have about the new economic reality: the [...]
My neighbor down the street, Chris Daggett, is running for governor as an independent in New Jersey. Yeah, sure, an independent won’t ever make it in this contentious, party-run state. But tonight his wife called to say that in the morning he’s getting the endorsement of the Star-Ledger, the [...]
Is this a story or an ad? It matters.
I went to Radio Shack today to buy wires and plugs to hook up my iPhone because the damned car radio has no plug and the damned FM kluges don’t work. I bought the wrong wires, realized it immediately, and returned [...]
Here’s this month’s edition of the Guardian Media Talk USA podcast with me at the helm and the NY Times’ Brian Stelter and Time’s James Poniewozik on the couch. This month: No newspaper mourning, mewling, and misery! We talk TV – Letterman, talk shows, the fall season – plus [...]
NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik came to CUNY to report on the effort to find new business models for news, including our Knight Foundation funded presentation at the Aspen Institute. It turned into a bit of a profile of yours truly.
[...]The Federal Trade Commission just released rules to regulate product endorsements not just in advertisements but also on blogs. (PDF here; the regs don’t start until page 55.)
It is a monument to unintended consequence, hidden dangers, and dangerous assumptions.
Shocking news this morning that Gourmet, the Talmud of food, is closing – less shocking that Condé Nast is also folding Cookie, Modern Bride, and Elegant Bride, all apparently a case of the other Monolo dropping after McKinsey dug into Condé’s closets.
(Disclosures: I worked in Condé for [...]
I got email this morning from someone getting ready to present to the European Parliament on the changes in journalism from their perspective. He said: “Given the shift to hyper-local journalism, being a supra-national body seems to be a problem. It is a particular problem for the EP in that [...]
Leo Laporte, creator of This Week in Tech and the TWiT network of podcasts, spoke before the Online News Association this week and presented the very model of the new media company: small, highly targeted, serving a highly engaged public, and profitable. (Full disclosure: I am a panelist on TWiT’s [...]
The only way that journalism is going to be sustainable is if it is profitable – and out of that market relationship comes many other benefits: accountability to the public it serves; independence from funders’ agendas; growth; innovation. This is the future for journalism we envisioned in the New [...]
My surgeon called with the results of the pathology report on my prostate cancer. “It’s all good news,” he said. The cancer was contained to the prostate and had not spread to the lymph nodes. “As far as I’m concerned,” he said, “you’re cured.”
From the moment of my diagnosis, [...]
I’m getting ready for a talk this week at Philanthropy New York about giving and What Would Google Do? So I’d like your help on brainstorming what Googley philanthropy looks like. How would a transparent, networked, collaborative, even open-sourced, process-oriented, beta philanthropy as a platform operate?
Not being wealthy, I [...]
I spent yesterday marking the dangers around Sidewiki. Today, I’ll say what I think Google should do with it: close the toolbar app, open it up to the entire conversation, and turn it purely into an API. And probably buy Technorati.
I read a great deal of the discussion [...]
Google just introduced Sidewiki, which enables anyone to comment on a page using Google’s toolbar.
I see danger.
Google is trying to take interactivity away from the source and centralize it. This isn’t like Disqus, which enables me to add comment functionality on my blog. It takes comments away from my [...]
It has been a week and a half since my prostate surgery and I’m doing great. I’m walking a couple miles a day (can’t run for a few weeks but even when I do run it’s not running), eating normally, sleeping well, now able to sit and stand and cough [...]
This morning, Glam.com – the model of the new network model of media – extended its Twitter aggregator, Tinker.com, into news at Tinker.com/news. It’s very simple and that’s what makes it intriguing: headlines mixed with current discussion of them.
Yesterday, New York Times digital strategy head Martin Nisenholtz also [...]
In an essay that, on first blush, ranks near to Clay Shirky’s seminal thinking-the-unthinkable think piece, Paul Graham argues that we never paid for content:
In fact consumers never really were paying for content, and publishers weren’t really selling it either. If the content was what they were [...]
When Google Wave was announced, I got all jittery-happy about the possibilities it presented for news. Now, from a Belgian site, via a German site, I find a video interview with Wave’s project manager, Stephanie Hannon, speculating about its use in news:
Journalism is a business – that is how it is going to sustain itself; that is a key precept of the New Business Models for News Project. But is it still an industry dominated by companies and employment?
In the first part of his analysis of the news [...]
Few of you should care but for those who do, here’s a chronicle of my experience in robotic surgery for prostate cancer. I post it here mainly for the ongoing Google value to those who follow me into the O.R.
At 9a Monday, I walked into the [...]
My prostate surgery went fine. I’ve been tweeting it. Will blog more when I get a full keyboard at home, later today, I hope.
[...]In addition to the podcast (below), the New Business Models for News Project is the subject of my column in the Guardian’s media section. Here’s the full text:
There is a future for news – a sustainable and once-again profitable future with the prospect of expanding and improving journalism [...]
The latest edition of the Guardian MediaTalkUSA podcast, which I present, features the work of CUNY’s New Business Models for News Project and discussion with two folks who know hyperlocal: Deb Galant, founder of Baristanet, whom I crowned the queen of hyperlocal; and Jim Willse, editor of [...]
Zephyr Teachout has a good column in tomorrow’s Washington Post predicting the disaggregated university. It’s very much in harmony with what I wrote in What Would Google Do? – that complete chapter here. I also gave a talk on the topic via Skype to the Media Education Summit [...]
Yesterday I tweeted about Google’s offer to bring its checkout to enable micropayments for newspapers: “A cynical act, I’d say: a tool no one uses used to coopt foes on a useless quest.” In response, Charlie Williams tweeted, “How about savvy & low risk?” And I said that savvy and [...]
As I prepare to go under the robot on Monday, I’ve found that the process includes drugstore embarrassments. They’ve only just begun.
It starts with Viagra. As I’ve explained, a man’s plumbing doesn’t do the two things it’s supposed to do for at least some time after the prostate [...]
Google has an image problem – not a PR problem (that is, not with the public) but a press problem (with whining old media people). Google is trying hard – too hard, perhaps – not to argue with the guys who still buy ink by the barrel. Google is only [...]
I was growling at my iPhone on the train this morning as I read a prominently promoted New York Times story about the rumored Chelsea Clinton wedding that didn’t happen. Sixth graph:
The persistence of the rumor despite the lack of tangible evidence says something about today’s free-for-all Internet [...]
In newspapers’ game of revenue roulette, there’s a lot of talk lately about their trying to create membership plans. The New York Times and the Guardian, to name two, reportedly have visions of tote bags, mugs, and events in their heads. And I think that’s a fine idea. No salvation. [...]
At the Aspen Institute FOCAS event, where we presented our CUNY New Business Models for News, there came to be an unspoken debate – that is, an idea thrown out but never really engaged – about whether there is a crisis in news and journalism.
I now say that [...]
Like priests looking for someone to sacrifice, Alan Mutter, Steve Buttry, Howard Owens, and Steve Yelvington have been on the lookout for the sin that led newspapers astray. For Mutter, it’s not charging; for Buttry, it’s not innovating; for Owens, it’s tying online dingies to print [...]
CUNY is streaming my opening lecture & discussion with the incoming interactive journalism class at 2p ET today:
[...]In today’s Daily News, David Hinckley and Talkers’ Michael Harrison speculate that when Howard Stern’s Sirius XM contract is up, he could use the internet to start his own broadcasting company.
Indeed, he could. Technology makes it possible: We could listen to him – and watch him – on [...]
The newspaper industry should be sobered by Martin Langeveld’s calculations, based on the Newspaper Association of America’s misplaced bragging about Nielsen internet data, that only about a half one one percent of time spent online is spent on newspaper sites.
It is clear that if journalists want to [...]
Line by line, newspapers’ businesses are falling apart as they shrink and become less efficient for advertisers against the competition and reach of online. Consider:
* Coupon giant Valassis abandons newspaper distribution for the postal service in three more markets. Says Crains: “The move represents the acknowledgement that newspaper [...]
On the Media’s Bob Garfield interviewed me about the CUNY New Business Models for News Project.
I made one error: the new news organization’s editorial staff after three years is 46; total is 90.
Bob was nice enough to plug my book. Now I’ll plug his, [...]
We presented our CUNY New Business Models for News at the Aspen Institute and on the web yesterday. I’ve been sitting in meetings nonstop, so I haven’t had the chance to read all the reaction yet. But so far, we’ve met our goals: to get these models and specifics [...]
Today we’re presenting the work of CUNY’s New Business Models for News Project at the Aspen Institute’s Forum on Communication and Society .
Here is the presentation, which uses new software from Prezi. Just click within the screen once the presentation starts and you will advance [...]
The Guardian asked me to write a column about the transparent life and my writing about my prostate cancer. Here it is:
* * *
In the company of nudists, no one is naked and there is nowhere to hide. In this space and on my blog, I have been [...]
I was asked by a reporter today what I thought of TV companies revolting against Nielsen and threatening to start their own measurement company. My response:
I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen as I’ve argued for sometime that the old sample-based (that is, Nielsen-family) structure of [...]
Arnon Mishkin says he has found the fallacy of the link economy but I think his argument is itself built on some fallacies, among them:
* If links are not valuable, then fine, get rid of them: refuse all aggregators’ and search engines’ robots, complain so much about links that [...]
I just did an interview about my cancer with Steve Langford from Howard 100 News, who really is an intrepid reporter. I told him I could certainly not describe the full details of going through this with other media outlets (not that a single one of them would care) because [...]
I have cancer, prostate cancer.
When the doctor told me, he said that if you’re going to get it, this is the one to get. It made feel as if I’d just gotten an upgrade on Cancer Air. It was caught very early, found in only 5 percent of one of [...]
