News Corp is endangering journalism

Linking to public internet sites is right for democracy and journalism and News Corporation is wrong to impede it

Couldn't agree more with Jeff Jarvis' comments this morning.

Linking is the fuel of the internet,it is the fuel of accountabilty and it is the fule of coonection and conversation.

No more to say so will leave it to Jeff

By trying to cut off links, News Corp is also endangering journalism. As an economic matter, the link is how our work will gain audience.

Rather than levying taxes for the sake of old media give tax breaks to new media says Jeff Jarvis

Journalism is not in crisis – its fate lies in the hands of new and old media entrepreneurs, not institution

That's according to Jeff Jarvis writing in Media Guardian this morning responds to Columbia Journalism's president, Lee Bollinger, who declared

"a crisis of massive proportion" for news and argued that the market will not support quality journalism. "The economic foundation of the nation's newspapers, long supported by advertising, is collapsing

and

sought government funding as being the answer.

According to Jarvis though,when government involves itself with media, trouble often follows.Instead the solution should be the entrepreneur

Rather than levying taxes for the sake of old media, we may want to give tax breaks to invention in new media and technology (by companies old and new). Rather than safeguarding the owners of presses, we should bring the entire nation online via broadband to create a new market and, with it, new development.

Stern's vision of future broadcasting

Jeff Jarvis has been tuning into Howard Stern's radio show whilst running errands and managed to jot down what the shock jock thinks will be the future of broadcasting

Tomorrow I could go on the internet and start my own channel with my own subscribers. You’d be able to click and watch us on TV, watch us in the studio live, streaming. You’d be able to listen to us streaming. You’d be able to get us on your iPhone. You’d be able to do everything right at the click of the internet. I wouldn’t even need to work for a company. I’d be my own company… So true it’s ridiculous.

Interesting and probably true as Jeff says

On the internet, Stern would get the complete freedom he has long lusted after. He would share his revenue and value with no one but his staff. Now that we can listen to radio over the internet – on our internet-enabled phones – we can listen to him anywhere He would have direct relationships with his fans. He could charge them He could sell advertising in new ways. Fans could get him anywhere, anytime. If he’s smart – and he is – he could open up enough tidbits to go viral, letting his audience market him for free.

Get well soon Jeff Jarvis

Jeff announced earlier in the summer that he was suffering from Prostrate Cancer.

He went under the knife yesterday and reports from his blog that

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.

Good on you Jeff Jarvis

Jeff Jarvis has been doing some thinking on his Buzz Machine blog recently.

Firstly his post The speech the NAA should hear seems to have hit the nail right on the head

You blew it.
You’ve had 20 years since the start of the web, 15 years since the creation of the commercial browser and craigslist, a decade since the birth of blogs and Google to understand the changes in the media economy and the new behaviors of the next generation of - as you call them, Mr. Murdoch - net natives. You’ve had all that time to reinvent your products, services, and organizations for this new world, to take advantage of new opportunities and efficiencies, to retrain not only your staff but your readers and advertisers, to use the power of your megaphones while you still had it to build what would come next. But you didn’t.

Then in an angry but constructive response to the AP threats he says that

The problem today is that aggregators favor freshness, but the latest story in a topical cluster is often the 87th rewrite of the news and it’s usually from the Associated Press, which cuts off links and credit to the original journalism (for all its bluster, the AP is actually the biggest problem newspapers have online, but more on that in a minute).

Maybe Jarvis has a point

I don't believe that Jeff Jarvis is behind my reasoning for Britain or for that matter America putting public funding into journalism.

But he does make a good argument of where the money should go in the digital economy over at Buzz machine.

broadband and technology development. An investment there will do more for the future of news than any dollar, euro, or pound given to keep presses rolling.

he says and maybe this in all his reasoning is the most important reason why

Advertisers will have no excuse but to go online, when most everyone is there and when it can serve rich media beyond the banner.

Now far by me to disagree with Jarvis,in fact his digital solution may be the ideal but it needs to be backed by monies that direct the technology to all and not just the affluent community.Otherwise there is a danger in all this of creating a digital divide.

Better though than giving 18 year olds free subscriptions

In the public eye or he who lives by the sword

A couple of days ago,I mentioned the spat that has been going on between Jeff Jarvis and Ron Rosenbaum.
Jeff's demeanor throughout this attack has been flawless and his heartfelt posting from yesterday is well worth a read.

Sometimes we forget the personal affects that this cyberwar can have and as Jeff points out

This was hardly the first time I’ve suffered a personal attack, nor will it be the last. Although I will say that it made for a particularly awful day - bad taste in the mouth, unsettled feeling at the pit of the stomach, vulnerability, disappointment - I’m certainly in no position to seek sympathy. I’m a blogger who has done my share of snarking. I spent years as a critic and got poison-pen responses from fans and actors. I know I’m being blunt with my opinions about journalism because I think that’s both necessary and working, but I also know it rubs some people wrong. So be it.

Rosenbaum v Jarvis

There is a bit of a spat going on between two of the media gurus.

It started with a posting by Ron Rosenbaum at Slate Magazine in which he accused Jeff Jarvis of gloating over the death of print.

The prosecution states that Jarvis once a steward of the old media has sold out and is

living the good life

by being

the very model of a modern new-media guru

Nothing wrong with that you may think and Jarvis is a respected commentator on the new media,writing in Media Guardian,attending numerous conferences and writing a very good blog.
However now says Rosenbaum

something has changed in the last year or two: He's now visibly running for New Media Pontificator in Chief. He began treating his own thoughts as profound and epigrammatic, PowerPoint-paradoxical, new-media-mystical. He acquired the habit of proclaiming "Jarvis' Laws" of new media, acting like a prophet, a John the Baptist if not the messiah.

and furthermore

he's become increasingly heartless about the reporters, writers, and other "content providers" who have been put out on the street by the changes in the industry. Not only does he blame the victims, he denies them the right to consider themselves victims. They deserve their miserable fate—and if they don't know it, he'll tell them why at great length. Sometimes it sounds as if he's virtually dancing on their graves

Jarvis not surprisingly though replies

Sadly, Rosenbaum doesn’t debate the idea and history and fate of journalism, which might be productive or at least provocative. Instead, like a pissy third grader, he attacks me. Because of my opinion, he says he doesn’t “like” me anymore

Why have I got a feeling that this is going to run and run?