Editors note: After reading my post, Jeff Jarvis claims he's not advocating outsourcing your Web site ... just the CMS. That's not what I gleaned from the following quotes, but we'll take his word for it.
Jarvis quotes Bob Wyman extensively and then says we should all take his advice. Here's one of the odd quotes:
"Today’s newspapers invest in their web sites out of vanity and from an inability to get their heads out of the geographically defined markets of the past. They have a 'local paper' so they assume they need a 'local site.' Bull. Developing and maintaining a web site is expensive and reduces the funds available to support the journalism and community building."
I assumed the phrase "developing and maintaining" to include a lot more than creating a CMS. Sounded to me like they're advocating one common Web site, not just a common CMS. Next quote:
"If you think you need SQL and HTML people on full-time staff, then you’re probably not understanding what it will take it succeed in the future."
In my opinion, SQL and HTML people are needed for more than creating a CMS. Apparently, Jarvis doesn't? Next quote:
"Heck, an online paper isn’t much more than a complicated Blogger.com. If Google can provide free hosting to the 'citizen journalists' who are making life difficult for the newspapers, Google should be able to host the newspapers for free as well . . . The idea would be to have each 'newsroom' focus on whatever it does best and then link them all together into a larger whole which is greater than the sum of the parts."
Apparently Jarvis says this is simply more advocacy for a common CMS, but not a common Web site. My mistake. Sounds to me like they're advocating for one common Web site for all newspapers.
Here's my first reaction to the post by Jarvis:
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After thousands of posts about how best to do online journalism, Jeff Jarvis is now contemplating whether newspapers should just stop trying to create great news Web sites. Consider throwing in the towel and outsourcing the Web stuff to someone like Google, he says.
Here's the depressing and misleading tones of what Jarvis recommends:
"Newspapers are in the wrong businesses. They should no longer be in the manufacturing and distribution businesses — which have become heavy cost yokes — and should no longer try to be in the technology business. They’re bad at it."
Under the Jarvis plan, journalists keep writing stories but do it for one common Web site that is basically a souped up version of Blogger.com. Perhaps he's feeling blue about massive layoffs across the industry? I don't know what's wrong. Jarvis has taken the good idea of building on your core competency and twisted it into an argument for abandoning basics.
Anyone who follows this suggestion ignores the success of numerous online-only publications such as Huffington Post, which has its own design and feel. Would HuffingtonPost.com have grown into the massive traffic generator it is today if it had been merely part of Blogger.com?
The notion that it's too expensive to compete online because you have to hire programmers and coders is just lazy. Jarvis sounds like the newsroom curmudgeons who moan for the days when all they did was write a story. None of this silly multimedia stuff, they whine.
Jarvis pretends newspapers are experts only on how to write stories.
"Get out of the manufacturing and distribution and technology businesses as soon as possible. Turn off the press. Outsource the computers. Outsource the copyediting to India or to the readers. Collaborate with the reporting public. And then ask what you really are. The answer matters dearly."
Who are we? Let's remember that newspapers installed giant printing presses and managed citywide distribution networks, proving they can master kooky things that have nothing to do with journalism in order to be the success they are today.
In the Jarvis dream world, he'll just let someone else deal with all the tough logistics. After all, they make his head hurt.
"And a note to others — Google, the AP, et al: There is an opportunity here to be the platform for news. Takers?"
No, there will be no volunteers. Because if newspapers decide to stop creating their own Web sites, then the real "takers" will be the online-only publications who take the market.
Creating a Web site is not optional. It's a cost of doing business. If you stop creating your own Web site, then you cease to compete.
Comments (2)
That's not what I'm saying at all. I (and the people I quote in the post) are instead saying that we should give up trying to create the technology behind those sites. Create the sites, by all means, please (and feeds and more). But stop thinking that you have to create your own special CMS or Flash platform or you name it. Use what's there. Put your resources, talent, experience, value, brands, and communities to their best use - and that's not recreating technology that already exists but making it worse.
I'm not saying we all create this for one web site -- except insofar as the web itself is one web site, where everything is just a search or a click away. That's how most people see it, not through our egotistical destination-centric views. But by all means, have the brand and site (and distribute yourselves).
HuffingtonPost proves my point! It is built on Movable Type! They didn't create a new platform. They used an existing one. Contrast that with papers I know that spend a fortune building their own. Foolish. Wasteful.
I suggest you change the headline of this post to "nevermind."
Posted by Jeff Jarvis | July 12, 2008 1:35 PM
Posted on July 12, 2008 13:35
Thanks very much for the followup. As I acknowledged in the post, I was thinking out and causing some confusion. Bottom line: We don't disagree as much as you thought and that's good.
Posted by Jeff Jarvis | July 14, 2008 5:22 AM
Posted on July 14, 2008 05:22