Jarvis on FTC’s Mumblings About The Future of Journalism

Jeff Jarvis reviews the FTC’s ‘potential policy recommendations’ on ‘saving’ journalism, and finds it wanting:

If the FTC truly wanted to rethink journalism and its new opportunities and new value in our democracy, it would have written this document from the perspective of the people it is supposed to represent: the citizens, examining how we can benefit from news that is newly opened to the opportunity of collaboration and greater relevance. Instead, the document is written wholly from the perspective of the companies and institutions of the industry.

He points out that the word ‘blog’ is conspicuous in its absence.

So, the disruptors are at the edge, undoing the past and making the future, and the big media organizations — who are deeply entwined with the structures and arcs or big government — are the subject of the FTC’s concerns, not us, the people. How are we best served is not really asked, it seems.

Just to get a sense of how parochial the authors are, they refer to content aggregators as ‘parasitic’. Murdoch could have been contributing to the project, it seems.