if what you say is true, here’s a newspaper that should have called mr. jarvis months ago (click my id)”

You must not be paying attention if you don’t know why I (and others) don’t like you. It’s because you represent the internet as a breeding ground for BS artists and twisted, over-hyped crap.

That said, here’s an interesting book you should read to continue your cause:

http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2009/05/whats-the-connection-between-michael-moritz-silicon-valleys-leading-venture-capitalist-and-hizballah-the-middle-e.html

The content economy — if we were only to limit it to newspapers (and not the many other commercial enterprises that create and sell content) — involves the sales (not free giveaways) of 40-50 million newspapers every day, with annual paid advertising north of $30 billion, employing somewhere around 300,000 men and women in the US. The link economy, not so much. Some of the best-known link economy citizens have been lucky that there are universities that need teachers, conferences that need speakers, and book publishers that need hot titles, because their own self-publishing efforts — while influential — do not constitute an economy that one can live on, let alone 300,000 people and their families.

Jarvis doesn’t claim to be unbiased.

To recap – when Jarvis points out that a “Jarvis is biased” argument is based on falsehoods, the defense of that argument is yet another falsehood.

Given that, it’s no big surprise that the biases that he’s accused of aren’t the biases that he actually has.

For example, one of Jarvis’ biases is that he wants journalists to make money. He expresses this bias by telling them to stop doing things that don’t make money and start doing things that do.

For some reason, that approach offends people so much that they lie about Jarvis’ bias. They seem to think that they should be paid to do things that other people are unwilling to pay them to do.

E.g. why would someone fawn over a company “that has built a business model that is dependent, in part, on content taken from newspapers,” when your larger strategy supposedly involves having a “vested interest in the economic decline of newspapers”?

What would Google do after sucking their alleged meal ticket dry?

Arnold,

Not only was your research poor related to Jeff Jarvis, it was poor related to the Kansas City Kansan.

As the person who transformed The Kansan to online only, I happen to know a bit about the publication.

The historical facts are, KCK suffered a serious decline in fortunes in the 1980s when the middle class fled Wyandotte County for trendier suburbs. Currently, Wyandotte has no middle class to speak of. It’s a very poor county. Secondly, prior ownership made a serious mistake in relocating the Kansan out of KCK and into another area of Wyandotte County, selling it’s downtown office. This created a lot of hard feelings in the community and tarnished the brand significantly. Third, once the paper’s fortunes began to decline, successive absentee owners milked it for profits rather than invest in fixing its editorial problems.

The Kansas City Star has had zero impact on the fortunes of the Kansan. It has no meaningful competitive presence in KCK and never has.

As a journalists, I would think it would be important for you to get your fact straight before drawing conclusions from assumptions.

if what you say is true, here’s a newspaper that should have called mr. jarvis months ago (click my id)

Are you saying that the penetration numbers, especially with young people are lies?

Do you argue that “Do Not Call” didn’t hurt newspapers?

Do you argue with his point that not one person is employed full time in internet journalism in Louisville?

I’ve thought about a blog – and thanks. But I’m not sure I should give away what I can sell.

It’s fair to say that you benefit at the decline of newspapers, as I said above (declining firms need more consultants to save them from decline). The new-media companies benefit on their own merits, not the decline of others (although their success comes from many of the same events that are killings newspapers)

Could this be the first blog-comments conversation that actually resolves a point? Wow…someone alert the (new) media!

But I still say your are wrong on the fact. I do NOT consult for new-media companies that benefit at the expense of newspapers. It’s simply false. He lied about me.

Bias? I have plenty of bias. I’m a blogger. And a consultant. And a professor. I have opinions. Nothing wrong with that. And my opinions are often directed against the monopolist newspaper publishers and editors who did nothing to bring journalism into the new age. But that is why I help where I can. And that is why it’s fine for Garson to disagree with me. But it’s not fine for him to lie about me. Especially not as he rides his high horse against lowly bloggers. He’s worse than the worst blogger, I’d say.

I’m not saying you’re wrong – newspapers are definitely in trouble. My feeling is that their problem lies with the timeliness of their news (once per day updates in a real-time world), rather than a complex array of financial, organizational and cultural problems, but that’s not here nor there.

What I’m saying is that your claims about being un-biased on this topic don’t ring true to me. Garson’s claim (“he does consulting work for new-media companies that compete directly with newspapers, and, thus has a vested interest in the economic decline of newspapers. The worse we do, the better he does”) seems more on the mark.

There’s no need to be un-biased in this situation. Biased is both acceptable and expected. I (and Robert) are saying embrace it, don’t run from it.

Rob, it’s time for you to get your own blog. You have more than the average dose of bile. You’ll fit in.