Jeff Jarvis Explains It All!

At long last, here is that Jeff Jarvis lecture in the spirit of TED.

As noted a several weeks ago ... it's an interesting speech on education, media, innovation, Google, collaboration ... and it starts with the "What Would Google Do?" author declaring, "This is bullshit."

Here's a couple excerpts from the rest:

I tell media that they must become collaborative, because the public knows much, because people want to create, not just consume, because collaboration is a way to expand news, because it is a way to save expenses. I argue that news is a process, not a product. Indeed, I say that communities can now share information freely – the marginal cost of their news is zero. We in journalism should ask where we can add value. But note that that in this new ecosystem, the news doesn’t start with us. It starts with the community.

And...

We must stop our culture of standardized testing and standardized teaching. ... In the Google age, what is the point of teaching memorization?

We must stop looking at education as a product – in which we turn out every student giving the same answer – to a process, in which every student looks for new answers. Life is a beta.

Why shouldn’t every university – every school – copy Google’s 20% rule, encouraging and enabling creation and experimentation, every student expected to make a book or an opera or an algorithm or a company. Rather than showing our diplomas, shouldn’t we show our portfolios of work as a far better expression of our thinking and capability? The school becomes not a factory but an incubator.

It's a good speech that picks up on many of the concepts Jarvis continues to tout on BuzzMachine, his various talks and, of course, in "WWGD?"

-rp-

NY Times Columnist Sums Up the Year in Media

What kind of year was it for the media? Well, not all bad, according to "After a Year of Ruin, Some Hope," a media column by David Carr in the New York Times.

Some highlights:

• Bloggers are getting serious, breaking stories and showing that good journalism isn't the sole domain of "old media"
• Technology-fueled media start-ups are showing the way to "media next"
• TV is far from dead when you consider breakthrough hits such as "Mad Men" and "Glee"
• Dave Eggers and his friends print ... a Newspaper!

Adds Carr:

... The constellation of local news sites put together by ex-newspaper folks include the big and well-financed like Texas Tribune (www.texastribune.org), the small and charming like Baltimore Brew (baltimorebrew.com) and some experiments that seem less tentative all the time, like MinnPost (www.minnpost.com) and Voice of San Diego (www.voiceofsandiego.org).

It’s a reminder that journalists will do anything to avoid getting real jobs, including conjuring a new kind of workplace that doesn’t include any of the legacy costs of trucks and printing presses.

Bring on 2010.

Updated ... See also:

• Jason Linkins on "Ten Things That Did Not Suck About the Media in 2009"
• JL on "Ten Things That Totally Sucked About the Media in 2009"

-rp-

Photo credit: "Cover of the Last Edition of the Rocky Mountain News" by Scorpions and Centaurs, courtesy of Flickr.com/Creative Commons

On the eve of teaching journalism Spring term at LBCC comes a story, no, a plea in The Nation for an American future that includes a robust media that upholds the promise our Founding Fathers made by including "the press" in the First Amendment.

It takes a while to get to the provocative stuff, but hang in there, the piece by John Nichols and Robert McChesney pays off in the end. The premise is this: Democracy depends in part on a strong "Fourth Estate," and it's up to the government of the people, for the people to give journalism a fighting chance, even if the media has shot itself in the foot, the head and anyplace else you'd care to mention. The authors conclude:

The technologies and the economic challenges are, of course, more complex than in the 1790s, but the answer is the same: the democratic state, the government, must create the conditions for sustaining the journalism that can provide the people with the information they need to be their own governors.

They suggest (Dare I say it?) government subsidies in the form of tax credits for newspaper subscriptions, grants to college media (to educate a new-and-improved next generation of real journalists, not media celebrities), and general fund support to turn failing for-profit newspapers and television stations into non-profit community information providers, not unlike NPR and the BBC.

It's all well-intentioned and thought-provoking, though I'm skeptical today whether it's a solution. I plan to discuss aspects of the article with my classes this term.

Once again, thanks to my OSU journalism colleague Pam Cytrynbaum for bringing this article to my attention. And to OSU journalism instructor Peter Ogle for the great comic, wherever it came from...

-rp-