Jarvis to the Newspaper Industry: You Blew It

Been following Jeff Jarvis at Buzzmachine for some time and he wrote a speech he wished would be delivered to the Newspaper Association of America at this week’s meeting and delivered it with with one key theme: you blew it.

He starts off with this:

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.

You blew it.

This is worth a read if you care at all about strong journalism and, especially, investigative journalism. Unless you’re a fascist, of course, and would really love to have a weak media filled with easily intimated bloggers (all with day jobs) so you could push your agenda with no one calling you out on it. Nicely done Brother Jarvis.

Posted in  

1 Comment

  1. Scott Skibell on April 8, 2009 at 7:32 am

    Makes me wonder about all the “other” existing businesses and internal company departments that are complacent in their thinking.

    I’ve used the newspaper industry as a poster child for awhile as I explain new ways of doing things. Most companies don’t get it. Or, they’re reluctant to challenge their existing cash flows. Acquiring, producing, and distributing news isn’t cheap. When new technologies come, decision makers are reluctant to change because of the legacy model.

    Thanks for sharing.



Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

About Steve Borsch

Strategist. Learner. Idea Guy. Salesman. Connector of Dots. Friend. Husband & Dad. CEO. Janitor. More here.

Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn

Posts by Category

Archives (2004 – Present)

Connecting the Dots Podcast

Podcasting hit the mainstream in July of 2005 when Apple added podcast show support within iTunes. I'd seen this coming so started podcasting in May of 2005 and kept going until August of 2007. Unfortunately was never 'discovered' by national broadcasters, but made a delightfully large number of connections with people all over the world because of these shows. Click here to view the archive of my podcast posts.