Jeff Jarvis Quotes & Sayings

Once the industry has been pared to its essence and its essentials, once we determine what matters most and needs protection, once we find the means to support that work, then journalism can grow again. — Jeff Jarvis

As content creators, we separate ourselves from the public while we create our product until we are finished and make it public - because that is what our means of production and distribution long demanded; only now are we learning to collaborate during the process. — Jeff Jarvis

This practically unlimited supply of advertisers in a fluid marketplace appears to be a new economic model that may insulate Google from some of the dynamics of an economy built on mass and scarcity. Google has its own economy. — Jeff Jarvis

Make linking to the rest an essential part of what you do best. — Jeff Jarvis

In the future, journalists must ask: How do we encourage and support flows of information? — Jeff Jarvis

When a TV network - not to pick on TV - devotes hours and hours to the salacious details of a crime of passion that affects none of our lives, is that advocacy? No. When an online site collects pictures of cute cats, is that advocacy? Hardly. When a newspaper devotes resources to covering football games, is that advocacy? Sorry, but no. — Jeff Jarvis

News is a stream of events, questions (and sometimes answers), debate, increasing information, and evolving understanding. — Jeff Jarvis

Then I narrowed the definition of the journalism sharply to focus on the journalism that matters, arguing that if it is not advocacy, it is not journalism - that is, if it does not strive to have a positive impact on the lives of citizens, then it is not journalism. If it does not hold power to account on behalf of citizens, it is not journalism. If it merely covers the baseball game or the county fair or the latest fire, that is not necessarily journalism. Journalism changes its world. — Jeff Jarvis

Just as our kids don't understand the difference between broadcast and cable, the line between TV and Internet TV is about to disappear. — Jeff Jarvis

You don't start communities, he said. Communities already exist. They're already doing what they want to do. The question you should ask is how you can help them do that better. — Jeff Jarvis

I believe the internet could prove to be as momentous an invention, as profound a platform. This is why we must protect the net from the control of governments and corporations - especially because they are the objects of the disruption technology enables. Only if it remains as open as the printing press for anyone - no, everyone - to use can the net. — Jeff Jarvis

My one great fear about advertising and media is that they, too, will become irrevocably unbundled, that marketers will no longer have need of media, — Jeff Jarvis

We the people have more power than we know, and we must learn to use it judiciously. — Jeff Jarvis

Should we continue to serve people as a mass now that we can serve and connect them as individuals? — Jeff Jarvis

In the real world, the tests are all open book. — Jeff Jarvis

Make it so obvious even a computer couldn't be confused. — Jeff Jarvis

I hate baseball. It's dull. Nothing happens. It's like watching grass - no, Astroturf - grow — Jeff Jarvis

The most successful enterprises today are networks - which extract as little value as possible so they can grow as big as possible - and the platforms on which those networks are built. — Jeff Jarvis

Where some see a new world disorder, others see the opportunity to bring organization. — Jeff Jarvis

If we become too obsessed with privacy, we could lose opportunities to make connections in this age of links. The link is a profound invention. Links don't just connect us to web pages, they also allow us to connect to each other, to information, to actions, and to transactions. Links help us organize into new societies and redefine our publics. — Jeff Jarvis

I can use my credit card to send money to the Ku Klux Klan, to antiabortion fanatics, or to anti-homosexual bigots, but I can't use it to send money to WikiLeaks. The New York Times published the same documents. Should we tell Visa and MasterCard to stop payments to the Times? — Jeff Jarvis

When you hand over control, you start winning. — Jeff Jarvis

This is why I like Diakopoulos' approach of using technology to answer a need. He identifies four news consumers needs: 1. staying informed; 2. gaining personal identity (through, for example, reinforcing one's values); 3. integrating and interacting socially (finding the basis for conversation); and 4. being entertained. He next defines 10 key journalistic functions: 1. truth 2. independence 3. impartiality 4. public interest 5. watchdogging 6. organizing forums 7. informing 8. storytelling 9. aggregating 10. sensemaking — Jeff Jarvis

The only sane response to change is to find the opportunity in it. — Jeff Jarvis

There are in fact no masses," said sociologist Raymond Williams, "there are only ways of seeing people as masses."11 — Jeff Jarvis

Owning pipelines, people, products, or even intellectual property is no longer the key to success. Openness is. — Jeff Jarvis

Perhaps we need to separate youth from education. Education lasts forever. Youth is the time for exploration, maturation, socialization. — Jeff Jarvis

Serving targeted masses of niches - as Google does - is the future. — Jeff Jarvis

Note well that investigative journalism springs mostly from two sources: whistleblowers' leaks and beat reporters' expertise. — Jeff Jarvis

Do what you do best and link to the rest — Jeff Jarvis

They are all fighting to know who we are, where we are, and what we want. — Jeff Jarvis

Indeed, education is one of the institutions most deserving of disruption
and with the greatest opportunities to come of it. — Jeff Jarvis

Managing relationships (with start ups) is more like teaching. — Jeff Jarvis

TV on the internet can now be freed from the need to fill a clock. It can expand past video. — Jeff Jarvis

I'd like to see every news organization, large and small, newspaper and blog, sponsor FOIA clubs in their communities to get scores, hundreds, thousands of citizens helping to open up data. — Jeff Jarvis

Nobody sells native advertising better than BuzzFeed, with an entire staff devoted to creating its trademark listicles and quizzes just for sponsors: How To Rank Your Happiness By Jars Of Nutella — Jeff Jarvis

digital subscribers produce a new revenue stream estimated at $160 million a year. — Jeff Jarvis

Your company is the company it keeps. — Jeff Jarvis

Memorization is not as vital a discipline as fulfilling curiosity with research and reasoning ... Internet and Google literacy should be taught to help students vet facts and judge reliability. — Jeff Jarvis

Writing in Library Journal, Ben Vershbow of the Institute for the Future of Book envisioned a digital ecology in which "parts of books will reference parts of other books. Books will be woven toghether out of components in remote databases and servers." Kevin Kelly wrote in The New York times Magagzine: "In the the new world of books, every bit informs another; every page reads all the other pages. — Jeff Jarvis

The cost of independence has dropped. — Jeff Jarvis

The web of trust is built at eye level, peer to peer. — Jeff Jarvis

Mobile isn't just another content-delivery mechanism. Don't try to be mobile first. Be user first. Context over content, that's the lesson of mobile. — Jeff Jarvis

We no longer need companies, institutions, or government to organize us. We now have the tools to organize ourselves. We can find each other and coalesce around political causes or bad companies or talent or business or ideas. — Jeff Jarvis

Journalism that matters, arguing that if it is not advocacy, it is not journalism - that is, if it does not strive to have a positive impact on the lives of citizens, then it is not journalism. — Jeff Jarvis

Sometimes, news is best served fresh. Sometimes, it's better when baked. — Jeff Jarvis

What's insidious about the fear of what others will say is that you rarely hear them say it. You imagine what they'd say. You imagine they care that much about you. The fragility of our own egos gets the better of us — Jeff Jarvis

The first step in blogging is not writing them but reading them. — Jeff Jarvis

Like most other creatives, I struggle with self-sabotage, self-doubt, and feeling like an imposter more often than not. I struggle with expressing myself, because it does sometimes feel easier or safer not to. — Jeff Jarvis

Just heard the best word in the English language: benign. (And I don't need to see that doctor again for five years.) — Jeff Jarvis