"Meanwhile, 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." - Sean McBride from Bookmarklet

Jeff Jarvis may have been harsh on traditional journalists and the traditional mainstream media, but not nearly as harsh as the crushing force of natural technological and cultural innovation and change. Ron Rosenbaum may be focused on the wrong target. - Sean McBride

I'm never a fan of someone who wants to tear down models in one breath unless his/her second breath is how to replace them. - Patricia

Patricia -- don't these new models tend to evolve organically and rapidly, without much advance planning? Who could have envisioned in 1995 the current role and power of Google? But Jarvis perhaps invites angry responses by seeming to take too much pleasure in the pain of those traditional businesses that have been steamrollered by the Internet. - Sean McBride

Sean, to a degree, but how is it that a girl like myself, a nobody, can map with pretty scary accuracy, create a company in my bedroom over a weekend and do what tons of big media can't? The web is a platform. It has disrupted plenty of industries - and plenty have fared well. Look at retail versus music. It IS something you can plan. You do have to adapt but you can forecast by looking at what it's designed to do. Print media is dying because it has a lot of people talking, but little doing, and it in itself has no idea how to marry an audience to a new platform. I watched a panel of the top people in media talk about the web and was not the only person in the audience who was giggling that nobody knew what they were talking about - or what to do next. WE all did, but they, the leads at huge companies (many you'd recognize) had no clue.... that's why print is struggling. Lots of talk, little action - or not the right action. - Patricia

Also, I wrote this for huff post in July: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrici... - Patricia

Patricia -- you seem to be more fleet-witted than most entrenched mainstream media high officials, and are helping to support Jarvis's key arguments. :) Many key members of the Old Media seem to be clueless about Internet New Media. It can be exasperating to try to talk to them. Jarvis seems to feel that they are getting what they deserve. Perhaps he is a bit too brutal and cruel in stating the obvious. - Sean McBride

Good article on Huffington Post. You're going to have to take a jackhammer to many of these Old Media people to get through the mental concrete. - Sean McBride

Sean, the difference between somebody like him and someone like me is that we don't talk about the problem - we present the solutions. I think there are a lot of people who get big media's ear, but what it really boils down to is whether or not they help them adapt. I think out of all print media, NY times has been one of the few adapting well. The rest are tanking. I'm not sure if that's a sign of someone like Jeff's work, or if it's that big media won't let someone like him do what needs to be done. The biggest problem is that like music, print media itself didn't build the right house and the big bad wolf (the web) is here. - Patricia

@gregory, I believe that's because the ad industry has its own adoption/adaption problems. There's a lot of misunderstanding, gouging, and blind leading blind in that business. Just the issues with analytics alone are a problem. That's why I think there needs to be a top level, national effort to clean up the problems on the web, weed out all the "experts" (mis)leading people, etc. You have a lot of me-too mentality, lack of real understanding of what the web is here to do, etc. It's a complicated argument. To answer your question, how they make money is by fixing all the problems with making money in the first place. :) - Patricia

Patricia -- the main problem with understanding Internet impacts on the traditional media is that you have to think really, really, really big. The transformations go so deep that they are difficult to imagine. For instance, it is not clear to me that traditional newspapers and magazines can survive by transferring all their assets and operations to the Web. The basic model of the newspaper and magazine is crumbling under the pressure of new Internet modalities. I really doubt that the New York Times (or any other newspaper) will be able to save itself by trying to transition its operations to the Web. - Sean McBride

Sean I think you can think really, really big - and that transition needs to happen in stages, another area of problem. It's too early for mobile, yet it's mobile, mobile. mobile. To me that's an example. Newspapers can survive by making the move in my opinion IF they can marry their audience to the new platform. Otherwise, then blogs wouldn't technically work either, no? It's not a simple issue, but one way or another: business must marry to the platform (web) or die. A lot of complex issues play in, but it's by no means impossible or the end in my opinion. - Patricia

Oh I definitely think paid content model is a when not if scenario. I wrote a piece on huff post about it. It won't be on all the web, but that supports what Steven's saying here. I agree people will pay small fees for what they find value in. They're already doing it. - Patricia

Gregory, i agree with you. I love this discussion. It's like solving a puzzle as a group! :) I really don't know if my mindset is right, but I've spent a lot of my life in the business and this is just what I've come to think should/could happen. - Patricia

Jeff Jarvis hit a nerve with Ron Rosenbaum. Jarvis is deliberately provocative, and Rosenbaum took the bait. Very Pavlovian. - Sean McBride

One word: disintermediation. That's the problem that traditional newspapers and magazines may not solve. - Sean McBride

disintermediation: "Removing the middleman. The term is a popular buzzword used to describe many Internet-based businesses that use the World Wide Web to sell products directly to customers rather than going through traditional retail channels. By eliminating the middlemen, companies can sell their products cheaper and faster. Many people believe that the Internet will revolutionize the way products are bought and sold, and disintermediation is the driving force behind this revolution." http://www.webopedia.com/TERM... - Sean McBride

Sean, how would you explain that in a media environment? I *think* i know what you mean, but would love to spend a minute in your mind on this. - Patricia

How will disintermediation undermine the newspaper industry as a business model? Newspapers are losing their power to act as gateways to information, intellectual talent, products and services. Consumers can easily go around them and ignore them, and they are increasingly doing so. Researchers, pundits and advertisers don't need newspapers to reach their audiences. - Sean McBride

Sean, but where are they getting their information, then? I would guess new media sources - so newspapers can still be relevant. The problem is, they're not positioned for it. In all my experience, people are still sheep. Lots of proof of it even on the web. Given this, if newspapers have a presence online as sources, they can lead people toward them as any other site can. I have almost all print media in digital from in my RSS. The information is better. Blogs are great for spot news on specific markets. But, I have just 2 blogs in there. - Patricia

Steven could you give me an idea of reintermediation in the media environment, too? :) - Patricia

Patricia -- increasingly, individuals with a PC and a net connection are acquiring more power to influence the world than owners of large media properties, like Arthur Sulzberger Jr. of the New York Times. That is disintermediation. The most influential bloggers in the world don't need Sulzberger, Redstone or Murdoch to reach a global audience. Mainstream media owners may be left holding a big bag of nothing once all this shakes out. (Perhaps the film industry will be last old media institution to fall, if it ever does -- making movies requires a huge capital outlay and the organization of many talented people into a unit.) - Sean McBride

Sean, I agree the playing field is leveled. But, that doesn't mean bloggers adapt well either. Many big blogs are making money off events, not ad revenue. Many need ad networks. Advertisers are still more into big names than small publishers - I say this from experience in owning one. Bloggers don't have the $ for resources like comscore or to travel to the middle east to report on something. So, their information is based on things like Compete, which is flawed. I think it's fair to say there is a more open window to break strongholds of big media, but it's not without it's own limitations and disadvantages. In the end, the winner will be who can sway the audience, and I don't believe anything has truly changed about that. - Patricia

Patricia -- for the most part, the independent sources I follow are substantially superior to the mainstream and traditional media sources. They are always far ahead of the curve on technology, science, culture and politics. With the MSM people, it's almost always duh, duh, duh -- slow brains. They are always struggling to catch up. It's no wonder that the Internet still has them on their heels and will probably discard them entirely. - Sean McBride

Patricia -- the traditional concept of journalism is disintegrating before our eyes. If I want to know what is going on in a particular region -- the Mideast, China, India, wherever -- I can go directly to the best experts on those subjects and eliminate the journalistic middlemen, who usually don't know what they are talking about anyway. Who would you rather consult about World Web Web developments -- Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the Web, or some journalistic hack for a newspaper? That's disintermediation. - Sean McBride

I am fairly certain that the traditional media are going to collapse, but I am not sure how people are going to make money with the new media. Google seems to be doing fairly well. :) We are in unknown territory here, in the midst of perhaps the greatest technological and cultural revolution in world history. No one has easy answers about how all the pieces are going to land and come together. Pay close attention to Internet startups that are making money, like Hulu. They are leading the way. - Sean McBride

I, too, would love to see some examples of reintermediation. Could The Huffington Post be viewed as an aggregator? Individuals with similar beliefs, interests and agendas seem to be moving towards organized relationships on the Web. - Sean McBride

Steven -- I was also a fan of Greg Linden's Findory. In general, there is a big future in designing recommender systems that advance the state of the art. - Sean McBride

Reintermediation, to the extent it occurs, will profit cutting-edge Internet companies like Google, not Old Media companies like the New York Times and Washington Post. That's my thesis. - Sean McBride