Jeff Jarvis's Blog, page 58

Disliking the public

There are those in the press and government who don't like or trust the public they serve. It is an unliberal attitude–which can come from Liberals, by the way–for it doesn't buy the core belief of liberal democracy that the people properly rule. Two classic examples:

Here we have a German government official saying that it is his job to protect consumers from themselves. In other words, they don't know best; he does. Nevermind what they do — giving up private data on Facebook or giving...

Advertising is next

Condé Nast is a house built on smoke and mirrors — that is, to say, on brand advertising. So it is astonishing to hear its CEO, Chuck Townsend, essentially toss the company's business model out the window of the Death Star in what The Times frames as "a fundamental overhaul of the advertising-based business model." This, folks, is surely the real product of the McKinsey studies undertaken at Condé, not a few magazines folded but a new strategy. In a phrase:

Advertising is fucked.

I've said

Privacy wingnuts

I've been looking for a classic example of so-called, self-appointed "privacy advocates" gathered by the press going off the deep-end (if you have any, please send them to me).

And then this dropped in my lap: a reputed outcry by these putative privacy advocates against Wal-Mart putting RFID tags on pants.

What could possibly violate our privacy with tracking pants in a store to make sure there aren't too many extra-large sizes on the shelves? (That was my experience with Wal-Mart when I...

Don't fragment books (or other content)

I agree with Devin Coldewey at CrunchGear that Andrew Wylie's deal to publish big authors' backlists exclusively on the Amazon Kindle is bad for readers (and for authors and for the industry).

Fragmenting content such that one has to buy one device to read one author and another to read another is blind to the needs and realities of the market. It's dealmaking for dealmaking's sake.

If I were one of those authors, I'd squeal like a columnist put behind a Times paywall (either one). Random...

Google takes the FTC to school

Google just issued a response to the Federal Trade commission's staff discussion draft on potential recommendations to support the reinvention [read: preservatinon] of journalism [read: newspapers]. (here was my reaction). It's a wonderful document that takes the FTC — and the news industry — to school on the First Amendment, copyright, fair use, antitrust, media history, business, and technology. The government and publishers should be embarrassed to need such remedial education.

Highlights:...

It's still about friends

Three examples of back-handed positive coverage for Facebook:

* bNet praises the anticipated Facebook Stories campaign about the service's 500 million friends:

Stories of communities using Facebook to come together to help a family in need; stories of finding a long-lost love on Facebook; of finally being able to easily share photos with grandpa, and so on. It will be cheesy. And it will work. Facebook will always have its detractors, but this effort will reinforce the reasons why those 500...

Errata=beta=collaboration

One of my great joys researching Public Parts, my book about the benefits of publicness, is finding parallels between today and the early modern period of the 16th and 17th centuries (aka the renaissance) with the introduction of tools — the press, the stage, music, art, maps, markets — that enabled people to create publics and how that changed how the world operated (the way we are changing it again today).

Here's one example from Elizabeth Eisenstein's book, The Printing Press as an Agent...

No American BBC

I just don't understand Columbia University's apparent obsession with handing over portions of the press to government subsidy, giving up on the free market. I haven't given up on it. Have you?

The latest raised palm comes from Columbia President Lee Bollinger in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal, of all places. This could send BBC-hater Rupert Murdoch to his grave so he can spin there. Bollinger proposes that we start an American BBC by pooling (merging?) the resources of the Voice of America, ...

The German privacy paradox, continued

German researchers have found that—heated rhetoric about privacy aside—people are willing to give away personal information in exchange for a bargain. They're even willing to give it away for nothing.

The Social Science Research Center in Berlin brought together 225 students at the Technical University there and offered them the chance to buy the same DVDs from two different online stores. Each store required the customers' name and postal and email addresses. But one store also required...

The First Amendment wins one

Bravo. The Court of Appeals has struck down the FCC's indecency rule — specifically, its fines for "fleeting expletives" — as "unconstitutionally vague."

No shit.

Fox is the official victor here. The other networks also win. But we all win whenever the First Amendment does.

The Appeals Court, to its credit, notes how much media and the country have changed since George Carlin first uttered his seven dirty words on radio and the Supreme Court blushed. Says the appeals panel:

The Networks argue...