Make Jeff Jarvis earn his street cred
UPDATED BELOW
After reading this absolutely brilliant takedown of “new media guru” Jeff Jarvis, I felt myself asking this question: What has Jeff Jarvis ever done to earn his “new media guru” street cred?
Kevin Rose went out and did. Craig Newmark went out and did. Nick Denton went out and did. Larry Page and Sergey Brin went out and did. Michael Arrington went out and did. These folks I just listed came up with ideas, invested in them, and then went on to flourish and profit in new media.
Jarvis? The only appeal that he seems to offer is the fact that he’s an old media dude who “saw the light.” He’s perpetually in “I told you so” mode and yet very rarely comes up with real results. He speaks in vague truisms while arrogantly declaring the Truth and frothing spittle at the old media “curmudgeons.” His ideas are vague and unoriginal.
He is the classic example of “those who can’t do, teach.”
My favorite quote from the Slate smackdown:
It’s an example of his blind allegiance to the wisdom of the consumer, to quantity over quality and expertise. Everything else is elitism. He’s the Sarah Palin of gurus. The crowd is always right.
Maybe the old media types at the New York Times and AP are impressed by his tirades, but forgive me if I can’t differentiate his writing from the hyperbolic anti-MSM rhetoric of your average Digg commenter.
UPDATE: Jarvis responds in my comments section, and I respond to him.
You have a point, but you’re missing a greater one - one that applied to John McCain this election cycle, but reversed:
Just because he doesn’t have the record doesn’t mean what he’s saying isn’t right.
Best,
The Editorialiste
http://editorialiste.blogspot.com/
Fair question. Answers: I…
* started the 10 local sites for Advance Internet (covering 28 newspaper markets) and the corporate structure for it.
* helped start CondeNet and its sites, including Epicurious, Style, and Concierge.
* helped start and restart Brides.com (a straight line, I know).
* Am a founder and partner at Daylife.
* am a partner at the company that produced Prezvid.com.
* am on the board of Publish2.
* was on the board of Moreover (Nick Denton’s company).
* arranged investments in Pyra (Blogger), Moreover, Cassiopaia (RIP).
* was on the board of Automatic Media (Plastic.com); RIP.
* have advised or invested in Black20, Covestor, 33Across, Brightcove, RayV.
* have consulted for Guardian.co.uk, About.com, The New York Times Company, Advance, Sky.com, Burda, Die Zeit, The Week.
* am advising another project I can’t talk about yet.
I’m most assuredly not a 20-year-old garage entrepreneur. Wish I were but I spent my career as a wage slave.
Well gee Jeff, I’m looking at your list and can’t help but scratch my head a little bit. Many of the sites you list here I’ve either barely heard of — 33Across, Brightcove — or they’re already-established still-struggling companies like The New York Times or CondeNet (which just laid of 60 people today). Also, many of these accomplishments include phrases like “helped start” or “was on the board of,” or “invested in,” which makes it hard for me to judge, without more information, if you were doing something truly innovative or gamechanging.
So that being said, let’s take one project that I think you’ve had a pretty direct hand in: PrezVid.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re one of only two or three people behind this project, no? This is a great example of everything you preach about; having a light staff that isn’t top heavy. Utilizing user generated content. Using already-created Google powered Web 2.0 tools (Youtube).
So I’d be interested in hearing about the success of this project. According to Technorati, you have fewer than 800 incoming links to the site, which is fewer than the number directed at this modest blog. And despite your constant proselytizing about the need to engage the community, you don’t have a very active comments section on the site.
So given this, can you please explain how you took your ideas — the very ones that you put forth to the companies that pay you thousands of dollars in consulting fees — and applied them successfully to this website?
Jeff, you forgot to mention that you also coined the word “blook”. Don’t be so shy!
I haven’t read the Slate piece yet, but as somebody who had heard of Jeff Jarvis’ work before BuzzMachine I can vouch for his new-media chops. The work he did for Advance Internet and CondeNet was pretty prominent and influential at the time.
Even if he had done nothing, though, there’s value in the body of work he has produced at BuzzMachine. You don’t always have to be engaged in an industry to be an effective analyst of it, any more than Roger Ebert has to direct a film to be a great film critic.
Well, Simon, whoever the hell you are, if you haven’t heard of Brightcove, you havent’ heard of the video platform of the NY Times, About.com, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Daily Mail, and many other services.
As for Prezvid, it was syndicated to WashingtonPost.com and, until cutbacks hit, to CBSNews.com, so it was profitable, which is more than one can ask of most businesses including auto manufacturers today, eh?
Rogers,
Thanks.
WWB,
I was trying to forget that.
Simon,
Oh, you’re that Simon, as in the proprietor. Sorry. I’m so used to anonymous comments.
Hmm, I hadn’t heard about the Washington Post syndication, congrats on that.
I definitely think you’ve accomplished a lot, both inside the industry and as a critic of it, but I have to admit that reading Buzzmachine can often be frustrating. The vague truisms seem to be often idealistic and not backed up by specific strategy, making your “I told you so” moments ring as false. And is it just me or were you singing the praises of hyperlocal for months until there were a string of stories about such sites failing, and though you still talk about newspapers ditching the AP and localizing their content, I haven’t seen much from you about hyperlocal lately. I think it’s often the case that you trumpet untested theories as fact and label anyone who questions them as “curmudgeons.”
But anyway, thanks for commenting.
Great exchange of comments between JJ and yourself but I must admit I am confused by your argument. Are you saying that only people such as Brin and Rose are qualified to talk about new media because they have been involved in “build”? Surely that confuses the means with the media?
Great exchange of comments between JJ and yourself but I must admit I am confused by your argument. Are you saying that only people such as Brin and Rose are qualified to talk about new media because they have been involved in “build”? Surely that confuses the means with the media?
Hey John, no not at all. What I was reacting to was Jarvis’s perpetual “I told you so” rhetoric and his constant declarations, or laws, that he hasn’t really tested. I think a lot of what he’s said can be found in the paranoid anti-MSM writings of thousands of bloggers. It’s a combination of either common sense or overly-idealistic futurist predictions presented as fact.
Simon,
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.
My first impression of Jeff Jarvis was that he was full of bs, and I’ve noticed a growing number of people with the same opinion.
I was really struck that such a blabbermouth would be clucking about his impressive status as journalism professor at CUNY in order to back up his reputation as a great thinker.
So I tried to find some info about his educational background and couldn’t find much, so I asked him and this is the bizzaro answer he gave me.
I sometimes wonder if he has a real degree or some kind of last-minute paperwork in order to get the position at CUNY. As a prof, I put importance on educational credentials. Work experience is also important, but Jeff Jarvis seems to shift emphasis back and forth between his impressive academic credentials and his real-world work experience whenever it pleases him.
http://www.buzzmachine.com/2007/05/10/your-advice-should-i-debate/