INMA World Congress: Jeff Jarvis insists "we have to redefine utterly what a newspaper is"

Posted by Helena Deards on May 15, 2009 at 2:28 PM

At the first full day of the INMA conference, the ever controversial Jeff Jarvis insisted that "we have to redefine utterly what a newspaper is". He made a distinction between what he described as the old "content economy" contrasted with what he calls the new "link economy". "Content gains value as it gains links," he insisted, "if you're not linkable you don't exist." Continuing with his old/new divide, Jarvis said that news is no longer about people buying a product, but about giving people information and listening to their thoughts on it - he promoted the idea of newspapers fostering better relationships with their readers.

Like Jarvis, Agustin Edwards, editor and managing director of Las Ultimas Noticias (LUN), in Santiago, Chile, emphasises the need for a solid relationship between a newspaper and its readers. However, he moves in entirely the opposite direction to Jarvis in his bid to secure a "purer" reader base: LUN is replicated daily in pdf on the publication's site, a process which makes it invisible to Google. This means the search engine can not use LUN's articles - but nor can it direct traffic to them.

In terms of charging for content, both Jarvis and Edwards are wholly in agreement. Jarvis is of the opinion that it is now more valuable to build audience - "I think the odds of success in charging now are slim to none". Edwards echoes his sentiments, with his belief that "if we charged for content on the internet our traffic would go down significantly... It's abandoning the trust in the advertising as a financial model."

Rob Curley, the president and executive editor of Greenspun Interactive has, it would seem, been thinking along the same lines as Jarvis and has utterly redesigned the Las Vegas Sun and its website. However, possibly not in the way Jarvis meant. Curley has taken the Sun back to its roots, and turned it into "a newspaper for people who love newspapers" - and for those who don't love them, he has redesigned the site. He surveyed which stories were having the most success online, and redesigned it in accordance with his results: more breaking news, local news, real estate, sport and entertainment.

Further expanding the company's range, he produced a variety of local interactive tools and is currently working on a video project which will run both online and on television called 702.tv. Discussing his focus on local news, Curley is insistent that he isn't doing anything new and that once, covering local events was doing your damn job, it was just called being a journalist in your town... It's old-school journalism done the way it would be done in 2009."

Opinions from the experts were at once clashing and complementary - but all seemed to agree on one necessary action: change. Whether that be Jarvis's suggestion that "we have to redefine utterly what a newspaper is," or Curley's conviction that what is needed is "old-school journalism done the way it would be done in 2009", they both want to see newspapers changing. What also stood out was that both Jarvis and Edwards believe publications could not, or should not, charge for online content - an interesting and unusual standpoint from members of an industry where that particular debate is currently taking centre stage.

Source: INMA