Jeff Jarvis is coming around, but he’s not quite there yet

I once derided Jeff Jarvis as a leading member of the “Future of News consensus” that urged newspapers to burn the boats and dismantle their printing presses in order to adapt to the new digital reality. I have since gained a new respect for him, in part because he recently authored a book on the printing press, which should give him a much firmer historical basis for his media analysis. I was also heartened to read his recent testimony on AI and the future of journalism before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law, because he stood up to the hedge funds, for which he once consulted, and their lobbyists. “I am offended to see publishers lobby for protectionist legislation, trading on the political capital earned through journalism,” he testified. “The news should remain independent of — not beholden to — the public officials it covers.” Jarvis argued against enacting a so-called link tax, which has so badly ravaged the news media in my country of Canada because Meta has now blocked news here rather than pay up, or extending copyright protection to newspapers in order to stave off AI. “Rather than protecting the big, old newspaper chains — many of them now controlled by hedge funds, which will not invest or innovate in news — it is better to nurture new competition . . . and openness rather than entrenching incumbent interests through regulatory capture,” he said. “In short, I seek a Hippocratic Oath for the internet: First, do no harm.”

 Most of all, however, I was impressed with his most recent Buzz Machine blog entry. “I am coming to a conclusion I have avoided for my last three decades working on the internet and news,” Jarvis wrote in response to recent mass layoffs at the Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, Sports Illustrated and Business Insider. “It may finally be time to give up on old journalism and its legacy industry.” Jarvis points not just to the layoffs, but also to the arrival of AI, cratering trust in journalism and turmoil at the Daily Mirror in the UK as further proof that legacy media are beyond salvation. “I wonder whether it is time to stop throwing good money and effort after bad,” he muses. “The old news industry has failed at adapting to the internet and every one of their would-be saviors — from tablets to paywalls to programmatic ads to consolidation to billionaires — has failed them.” I deal with his response to the layoffs, and that of others, in my latest column for Canadian Dimension, in which I note that I still firmly believe, as outlined in my 2014 book Greatly Exaggerated: The Myth of the Death of Newspapers, that print will survive in some diminished capacity. “Newspapers that have not fallen into the clutches of private equity players and U.S. hedge funds, after all, are making a steady transition to hybrid print/digital publications that rely more on reader revenues than on advertising,” I write. “By investing in quality content and a successful online subscription scheme, the Globe and Mail has led the way in my country, but it is bankrolled by the ultra-rich Thomson family, which hasn’t stopped them from charging $5 for a copy and $8 on Saturdays.”

I began to wholeheartedly agree with several other aspects of Jarvis’ remarkable analysis, but my column soon grew much too long, so I used about half of it for this blog entry, where I can ramble on at length. Jarvis is particularly on point when he identifies the need to re-invent journalism not for profit but to serve communities and to empower the next generation in media leadership when the legacy business model finally bottoms out. “Citizens will have to come together to understand their needs as a community: for information, yes, and also for understanding, collaboration, accountability, repair, and service,” he writes. “The way out of this will be to educate and empower our next generation, not in so-called media literacy, but in media leadership, in taking responsibility for the health of their communities and their public discourse.”

There are still issues on which I disagree with Jarvis, but I hope to bring him around. “I’ve been trying to convince news organizations that they are not, or should not be, in [the] content business, but that journalism is instead a service built on conversation, community, and collaboration,” he writes. “There can be life after legacy. There will be roles for journalists. But journalism schools must expand their horizon to teach more than making content.” I certainly agree that news should be considered more a service than a commodity, but what will we have left to serve communities and engage audiences with other than misinformation, disinformation, and conspiracy theories if we abandon actual verifiable news content? It sounds like Jeff would like to combine journalism and social media. That might actually be a good idea.

My biggest bone to pick with Jarvis, however, is that he stumbles as most do in deciphering the latest bad news. Layoffs don’t necessarily mean that news media are dying but could instead mean that they are adapting and, better yet, that they are able to adapt and thus survive. As for events at the Daily Mirror, an alternative analysis proves my point. Jarvis notes that its circulation has fallen from 5 million in the mid-1960s to 250,000 today, its local papers are “sputtering,” and the company predicts that print will soon become unsustainable.” From my research, I have learned to rely less on what newspaper companies say, especially to governments seeking yet another favour, and more on what their financial statements say because they usually explain a lot better what is really going on. In researching my 2022 book Re-examining the UK Newspaper Industry, I combed through hundreds of annual reports in the rich online resource that is the Companies House database and found that, despite all the doom and gloom they were spreading, newspapers there have been doing better than they had in years. Far from killing them off, the pandemic provided them a needed boost in their transition to hybrid print/online publications because more people than ever took up online news reading.

The confusion around this was exemplified by the story I told to end Chapter 1 about how Rupert Murdoch’s News UK petitioned the government to be released from his 1981 undertaking given upon purchasing the Times and Sunday Times to keep them independent in order to preserve media diversity. News UK claimed that the expense of keeping the titles separate, including the salaries of six independent directors, was weighing on the company during the pandemic and could threaten “ultimately, the economic viability of the two titles.” It noted the declining print circulation and advertising revenue of its Times papers but made no mention of their growing online revenues, and the government granted its application. The 2021 annual report for Times Newspapers Limited was filed the following month, and showed that its profits had doubled for the second straight year to £52.5 million (US$66.7 million). Its revenues had risen by £17 million thanks to strong growth in digital advertising and subscription revenues, as well as cover price increases which more than offset declines in print circulation and advertising. A year later, its profits had risen by another 58 percent to £82.9 million (US$118 million).

Similarly with Mirror owner Reach, its 2022 revenues fell slightly to £601 million from £616 million the year before, and its earnings fell more steeply from £165 million to £126 million, for a still-healthy profit margin of 21 percent. Its dividend to shareholders, however, somehow rose from 7.21 pence to 7.34 pence. That feat may be difficult to repeat for 2023, as its half-year results showed revenues down 6 percent and its third-quarter report showed them down 13.7 percent over nine months “in particular from Facebook’s de-prioritisation of news.” Circulation revenue, however, had grown marginally and “remains a resilient and predictable revenue stream,” leading the company to “remain confident of meeting profit expectations for the full year.” Yet Reach cut 450 jobs, or about 10 percent of its workforce in November amid reports it would replace them with social media “influencers.” Desperate times, after all, call for desperate measures, and the tongue-lashing they received from laid-off workers was nothing compared to the fallout from shareholders should that annual dividend fall. Reach’s full-year results should be released in a few weeks, and they could be very interesting indeed.