BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Tag: publicness

  • Sick of me yet? Well, here’s more

    14 comments on Sick of me yet? Well, here’s more
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    Here’s a piece I wrote for BusinessWeek’s social report on publicness. Snippet:

    In the company of nudists, no one is naked. We are entering an age of publicness when more and more we will live, do business, and govern in the open. Some see danger there. I see opportunity. . . .

    An accompanying video:

    The Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Sunday magazine this week devotes its entire issue to the future of newspapers and journalism. I have a lengthy interview in it – in Germany, I’m afraid.

    If you want to hear how bad my German is, listen to the start of this video, my keynote at Next09 in Hamburg this week. (Sadly, no one told me that the camera was set to record stage left and I pace a lot.)

    This interview in Spiegel Online is in German and in English.

    And a nice illustration accompanies this interview in the Hamburger Abendblatt.

    Finally, I was interviewed by Robin Wauters for TechCrunch at Next09 and I sucked up to Michael Arrington.

    : LATER: A Zeit Online interview, subtitled in German.

  • Tax-supported content is taxpayers’ content

    3 comments on Tax-supported content is taxpayers’ content
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    Gannett and Wisconsin high-school sports bodies are in a fight over streaming games. As more and more people can broadcast even from their mobile phones, I think there’s an important principle at work here and it should be: Tax-supported content is taxpayers’ content. That means that anyone should be able to broadcast public events paid for by the public. This also should include government meetings (which are usually covered by local open-meetings laws). Otherwise, we are going to find governments, bureaucrats, and private bodies trying to stop us from sharing what we see because of commercial interests (or using those interests as a means of control). The problem with my doctrine is that companies that invest in broadcasting events will say they will not be motivated to do so when they don’t hold exclusive rights. It gets very complicated – and expensive – at a university level, I know. But as a matter of principle, I am uncomfortable with government selling control to information we paid for, from research to maps to field hockey.

  • Openness

    27 comments on Openness
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    I was invited to speak to a media trade organization today – I’ll spare them the specifics – with the assignment of provoking discussion about new models, which I’m happy to do, even if I do often hear the same old lines and take the same old arrows. I also hear new challenges and learn from that. I was also looking forward to spending the rest of the day with the group to hear about their ideas and opportunities and needs were and, at their invitation, to share a drink at the end of it. I was going to get a chance to catch up with people I’ve worked with over many years and meet some new people I was looking forward to getting to know and I would learn a lot. It was an off-the-record session, which may not be ideal – for them – but is pretty standard; I’m used to that and abide by the desire.

    But after I finished talking and sat down to hear the next panel, I was ejected from the meeting. It wasn’t anything I said, I don’t think. It was that they now wanted a closed meeting. As I was rather unceremoniously rushed out, still noshing on my cookie, grabbing my coat and hat and trying not to let the door hit me in the ass on the way out, I turned to the room and said, “One last thing: Think open-source, people.” It got a laugh and even a hand.

    I was angry – insulted and embarrassed. But the problem is worse for this trade group and its industry. Talk about an echo chamber. What these people need is hear more new voices – newer than old me. What they really need to do is share their challenges and ideas openly and hear new perspectives and new answers from unexpected sources. Hearing the same old stuff from the same old group will get them nowhere. Witness the last 15 years.

    If I were such a group, I’d be bringing in people from many different backgrounds and perspectives – from bloggers to technology executives to inventors to investors to customers to kids – and share quite openly my business with them (it’s not as if media’s problems are a secret!) to get new ideas and solutions. But then, that is the reflex I have learned here, online. That, sadly, is still not how media people think. As a group – not to a man – they’re still closed. Too bad. That will hurt them. It already has.

    : LATER: A rather lengthy addendum, in response to a Jay Rosen comment, here.

  • Publicness

    2 comments on Publicness
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    Fred Wilson – bless his heart – blogs on my book, saying nice things (“It’s a good read, perfect for a flight. It’s not too dense, full of great quotes and insights. I’m enjoying it.”) and he pulls out one of the ideas that fascinates me most, one I’m thinking about writing on again: publicness.

    It starts with Catarina Fake telling how she and Stewart Butterfield made a fateful and wise decision when they started Flickr and “defaulted to public.” Then Fred retells the story I have in the book of Mark Zuckerberg and his Tom Sawyer moment in an art class: how public interaction helped an entire class. Next, Fred quotes a commenter who had a similar story about a class working through problems in front of the entire class (though the school stupidly requiring killing the product of this work).

    Here’s the lovely irony: Because Fred discusses this publicly and because he has wonderful discussions o his blog, there are more good ideas and viewpoints: a debate about whether Facebook is really public because we can control and restrict our publics here; discussion about competition and secrets; opinions about the foolishness of erasing knowledge; more talk about the value of secrecy vs. execution; a neat thought about the positive pressure of publicness; how publicness – being first to an idea shared in public – can lead to thought leadership.

    The double irony for me is that the book itself isn’t public yet. Fred shared a bit of it in public and that is what lead to this discussion. I can’t wait for it to be public – though, of course, books are only so public since they are sold. We’ll be putting some of the book online – I need to talk with the publisher this week about what exactly that will be – and I hope we’ll test the limits of the benefits of publicness.

  • Identity and anonymity

    5 comments on Identity and anonymity
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    On the Dallas Morning News opinion blog today, the paper brags about what sets its letters apart from online discussion: identity. They quote a frequent letter writer named Chris (irony: no last name given) who says:

    There was a statement in this guide whose importance is understood by far too few. Maybe it should have been entered in bigger and bolder lettering. The statement went as follows:

    “There is no shortage of online forums where people can make up facts and throw bombs. But in our published letters to the editor, people sign their names and publicly stand behind their opinions.”

    In a free society, opinions without sources reflect poorly on both writers and readers. This fact, along with the feedback that hard copy journalism has concerning government at all levels, constitute a valuable rationale for the necessity, existence and continuation of such journalism.

    I’m not sure I can parse that last sentence into anything approaching clarity. But the point of the rest is clear: identity is good.

    But then there’s a comment left by one PaulC (no last name, either), who argues:

    Really?

    “In an important case for privacy and free speech advocates, the
    Supreme Court ruled recently that the First Amendment protects
    anonymous political speech. In McIntyre v. Ohio Election Commission,
    decided April 19, 1995, the Court struck down an Ohio law that required
    the disclosure of personal identity on political literature. . . .

    Justice Steven’s opinion for the Court note that arguments favoring
    the ratification of the Constitution advanced in the Federalist Papers
    were published under fictitious names. Justice Stevens said “quite
    apart from any threat of persecution, an advocate may believe her
    ideas will be more persuasive if her readers are unaware of her
    identity. Anonymity thereby provides a way for a writer who may be
    personally unpopular to ensure that readers will not prejudge her
    message simply because they do not like its proponent.” Stevens
    concluded “Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a
    pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of
    advocacy and of dissent. Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of
    the majority. “

    Each is right. I have long said here that I give more credence and value to the opinions of those who stand by those opinions with their names, as I do here. But there is a place for anonymity in political discourse (and in whistleblowing and under repressive regimes).