I regret linking to Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine.com in my post about crowdsourcing and how it doesn’t have a future.
Jeff Jarvis got his big start by jumping on a bandwagon complaining about Dell Computer service. This gave him a soapbox and a lot of blog traffic that he enjoyed until it faded.
Then Jarvis, who worked for newspapers, decided to bite the hand that fed him.
If Jeff Jarvis didn’t start the “print is dead” movement, he was early to jump on that bandwagon too.
From his site…
I have worked for many a media company — Advance, Time Warner, Hearst, Tribune, Maxwell, News Corp., Knight Ridder — and know people and have friends in most of them. I have been turned down for jobs or contributor gigs, over the years (these are from the early years) at The NY Times, the NY Daily News, Paramount, and CBS. I turned down jobs elsewhere.
It’s that last sentence that sums up my dislike for him and the way he conducts his blog.
I don’t care that he chose to bite the hand that fed him. I just hate the way he goes about it, and resent the giant bullhorn that has replaced his modest soapbox.
He is now considered an expert on why print is dead.
Jeff Jarvis has the attitude that he knows it all and is intolerant of others. He turned down jobs elsewhere. BFD. What’s the purpose to make that declaration except “I am Jeff Jarvis, hear me roar.”
I can be snarky, but I’m not writing about anything serious here. Jarvis does. But he blows off commenters with such snideness and disrespect that it made my blood boil. I tried to read him because I thought it would be good to hear a different perspective, but after a couple of years, I quit. Life is too short. He is a bitter man ranting so the world will pay attention.
He is the Bill O’Reilly of blogging about print.
I blocked his computer IP and spammed his last comment. That would be it I told myself, until I read this from Morley Safer, which makes my point about crowdsourcing.
“The blogosphere is no alternative, crammed as it is with ravings and manipulations of every nut with a keyboard,” he is quoted in a Qunnipiac press release as saying yesterday. “Good journalism is structured and structure means responsibility…I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery.”
I wish I would have said that. So I’ll publish it again with emphasis:
“Good journalism is structured and structure means responsibility…I would trust citizen journalism as much as I would trust citizen surgery.”
Jeff Jarvis will probably return, but his comment won’t see the light of day here.
One bitter old man on this blog is enough.
