What's a newspaper?
In the new world, says the Prophet of Boom, what's a library? What's a classroom? What's a newspaper?
Jeff Jarvis is carrying out plans to join the new CUNY school of journalism. He's ideally suited to help us figure out what a newspaper is in this new age, and to help train the young journalists who will make these new newspapers come alive. And he's going to webcast his classes! Congratulations to Jeff on his eminently sensible move. We're all lucky that he left BigMedia.
It's a big question that Jeff is going to be working on. I love The Times. The day after John Roberts was nominated they published an enormous, careful, detailed story about his background. Just amazing. Their coverage of the Discovery launch (including the run-up to it) was great. More stories than I can believe are coming out every day about the Katrina aftermath. It's a truly great institution. But how can it survive this new era of fractured, personalized, man-on-the-street news-blogging? Even if it succeeds in changing itself to meet its changed electronic context, will other, smaller newspapers be able to make the transition?
Jeff is lining up to help train people to do good journalistic work in this new age, and I honor him for it. He says he wants to work on the ”future of media.” I wonder how many of his students will end up working for themselves.