BookyMedia

Observations of two disillusioned old-media churnalists

Aug 12, 2009

Why Jeff Jarvis is new media’s Richard Dawkins

: Richard Dawkins via last.fm

Rupert Murdoch’s decision to erect a paywall around his online news sites isn’t about the death of free content, or a battle of business models: it’s about the death of compulsory innovation.

New media blogger Jeff Jarvis has long been the leading – or militant – anti-paywall advocate yet. But it’s more his ability to highlight how much better life can be if we drop our old school mentality that no longer fits the new world that makes his views important to me. The professor of journalism is to old media what Richard Dawkins is to old religion: living and very vocal proof that there is a better way of looking at things. Unfortunately for the two of them, it’s a new way that is obscured by panic, a fear of the unknown and inertia about having to start from the bottom after working your way to the top.

Rather than bother to read Darwin’s The Origin of the Species, religion has held steadfast in its beliefs, often going backwards to protect its moral – and financial – foothold around the world.

Likewise, news organisations like Murdoch’s News Corporation, have had a golden opportunity to re-evaluate their role in the world. Likewise, new ideas came along that shook their ivory tower at the foundations. Likewise, they had the reach, brains, power and finances needed to achieve revolution, and likewise they bottled it. Instead of rebuilding, adapting or moving in the face of destruction, they decided to fortify using the same building blocks as before.

You can argue that Murdoch et al hung on to the bitter end, losing billions of pounds and watching countless titles close, and you’d be partly right. I for one didn’t expect them to hold on for so long and to lose so much before buckling under pressure. But it’s important to recognise that this capitulation by mainstream media isn’t about a failure on new business models; it’s about a failure to find new business models. And that doesn’t particularly bode well for the future, where the chasm between what we want and what MSM is willing to offer, will only get bigger.

James Seddon