Blogger to newspaper people: You blew it
Add comment April 10th, 2009
I came across this blog post earlier this week thanks to a Facebook journalist friend who shared the link.
Jeff Jarvis wanted to give a “blunt message” to the Newspaper Association of America, which met in San Francisco this week. (Jarvis is associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s new Graduate School of Journalism. His blog is called BuzzMachine.)
Google CEO Eric Schmidt addressed NAA members while they were in San Francisco. Here’s the speech they heard.
Jarvis’ speech took a different tone.In it, he tells newspaper people that they blew it by not understanding the “the changes in the media economy and the new behaviors of the next generation of — as you call them, Mr. Murdoch — net natives. You’ve had all that time to reinvent your products, services, and organizations for this new world, to take advantage of new opportunities and efficiencies, to retrain not only your staff but your readers and advertisers, to use the power of your megaphones while you still had it to build what would come next. But you didn’t.You blew it.”
It’s a harsh message. One that many in our business probably could have stood to hear, well, years ago.
