Jeff Jarvis's Blog, page 67

Rusbridger v. walls

Just as The New York Times announces its pay wall, Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger gives an important speech on the topic — indeed, on the very nature of journalism — arguing against pay walls.

Charging, Rusbridger says, "removes you from the way people the world over now connect with each other. You cannot control distribution or create scarcity without becoming isolated from this new networked world."

In an industry in which we get used to every trend line pointing to the floor, the growth...

The right to link

My column in the Guardian argues that we have a right to link and that the link is the basis of freedom of speech online. The issues are important and so I'm posting the entire column here:

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Linking is more than merely a function and feature of the internet. Linking is a right. The link enables fair comment. It powers the link economy that will sustain media. It is a tool for accountability. It is the keystone to free speech online.

But News Corporation has made good on its threat to fight ...

Entrepreneurial journalism on the air

On this week's On the Media, Bob Garfield interviews me about CUNY's entrepreneurial journalism program and the idea of teaching journalism students business. See our conference (call) with J-schools around the world that are starting to teach entrepreneurial journalism. We also discussed the New Business Models for News Project.

The cockeyed economics of metering reading

The irony of the report that The New York Times is going to start metering readers and charging those who come back more often is this: They would would end up charging — and, they should fear, sending away — the readers who are worth the most while serving free those who are worth least.

That's according to the math of News Corp., which argues that readers who come via links from search and aggregators and bloggers and such are worthless because they're not local and they don't stay...

The rise of the interest-state

In the post below, on Google standing up to China over its spying on dissidents and censorship, I note how Zeit Online calls Google a quasi-state — in a post under the headline "The Google Republic" — and Fallows says Google "broke diplomatic relations with China" as if Google were a nation.

What this says, of course, is that the internet is the New World and Google is its biggest colonizer: the sun never sets on Google.

It also says that on the internet, new states form across interests...

What Google should do

I am astounded and delighted at the news that Google is no longer comfortable censoring search results at the call of the Chinese government and is threatening to pull out of the market. Google said it discovered cyberattacks and surveillance aimed at cracking the mail accounts of Chinese supporters of human rights. Said Google exec David Drummond on the company blog:

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free...