Here’s one:
“The Frankfurt convention grounds are also jammed with books from all around the world. What struck me was the optimism of it: all that work to create books on the hope that someone would read them. And they make fun of bloggers for whistling in the wind.”
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But Rosenbaum can’t get past how heartless he thinks Jarvis sounds — toward the “poor fools” who make books, and to “the suffering of who knows how many families” who’ve been supported by the Monitor.
Farhi’s essay, “Don’t Blame the Journalism,” says that newspapers are dying because the business model collapsed with the loss of classified and, increasingly, display advertising, not because the public lost interest in them. “The real revelation of the Internet is not what it has done to newspaper readership – it has in fact expanded it – but how it has sapped newspapers’ economic lifeblood,” Farhi argues. “Could smarter reporting, editing and photojournalism have made a difference? Can a spiffy new Web site or paper redesign win the hearts of readers? Surely, they can’t hurt. But if we, and our critics, were realistic, we’d admit that much is beyond our control, and that insisting otherwise is vain. As British media scholar and author Adrian Monck put it in an essay about the industry’s troubles earlier this year: ‘The crops did not fail because we offended the gods.’”
Jarvis, says Rosenbaum, “believes the failure of the old-media business models is the result of having too many of those pesky reporters. In his report on his recent new-media summit at CUNY, he noted with approval one workshop’s conclusion that you’d need only 35 reporters to cover the entire city of Philadelphia. Less is more. Meta triumphs over matter.”
Later in this blog post, Jarvis wondered: “How could 35 journalists possibly serve Philadelphia as 200-300 had?” With all due respect to Rosenbaum, Jarvis wasn’t sure. He wrote, “I see one option: with the help of networks of independent agents working collaboratively.” But it’s all sketchy, and he knows it. He didn’t say 35 journalists would be plenty — he said that many might have to do.
