I am accused by some of dancing on the graves of journalists’ jobs, of being happy that papers are dying.That accusation may have been leveled elsewhere, which would underscore may impression of Jarvis. He, of course, denies the fact. But what he does admit is blaming journalists alongside business managers for the newspaper depression.
If I have an emotion associated with newspapers’ fall - and I’m not sure I do - it’s anger and disappointment at what Shafer describes as papers’ failure to think past a world seen in their own image, to bring news into the future and give it adequate stewardship.
Mr. Jarvis writes as if resistance to turning a newspaper into just another silly blog is ego. It's not ego, it's principle. It's what we were taught for decades in journalism schools. Those principles may no longer be profitable, but they are no less valuable. By his own standard, why is he using the term "adequate stewardship?" The Net, by it's nature, has no individual, only a collective stewardship. And the blogosphere, for all its popularity, is neither a place where much real journalism nor much profit goes on. Lots of news Web sites are popular, but not many of them, not even, as far as I can tell, HuffingtonPost, make money.
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