OTTAWA—As the Internet brings about a sea change across the media landscape, “really aggressive broadband policy” is the single best action for governments to support new media, Jeff Jarvis, journalist, blogger and journalism professor at City University of New York, told The Wire Report Tuesday.

“Do what Finland is doing and declare broadband access a right,” he said. 

Jarvis appeared in Ottawa Tuesday as the keynote speaker at the Reinventing Canadian Media Symposium hosted by the Public Policy Forum. In his 2009 book, What Would Google Do? Jarvis looked at the open and collaborative approaches of successful companies like Google. 

Following Jarvis’ keynote address at the Westin Hotel in Ottawa, he spoke with The Wire Report about the new media ecosystem, the benefits of ubiquitous broadband and the advantages brought about by an open Internet and media culture. 

The interview has been edited for length and style.

If Google was a newspaper how would it operate?

I don’t think Google wants to own a newspaper but a Google-y newspaper would see itself as a platform. And that is a platform for many things. It’s a platform to gather and share news, to report news, to sell ads, to distribute … In fact, Google already is that because you can use all the tools of Google to create the value of a newspaper today. You can use Blogger to publish, Adsense to make money, and you can put up maps and videos and all kinds of things. So in that sense Google already is that. It’s a platform. 

On that note, with the Canwest newspapers under new ownership, and your friend John Paton [CEO of the Journal Register Company] sitting on the board [and advising on digital strategy], what advice would you give him and the company regarding this new property?

I think Canwest has an opportunity to rethink its assumptions and rethink what it does. Bankruptcy is very hard to go through but it’s also a chance to rethink what you do and where your value really is. John Paton is a brilliant newspaper executive and he has the courage and vision to see that there are other ways to do news. He’s not doing that by starting new companies but by working existing companies like Journal Register and now Canwest.

Where he is now CEO, at Journal Register, he has handed everybody Flip cameras. He’s got them to look at new tools and how to put up a paper. He’s got them to rethink the order in which they do things: digital first and print last. I think it’s a very exciting time and I’ve been around his staff and they are very excited to be there. These are the lessons he’s learning down there that he can share with management at Canwest. I think the essence of this is to free your staff to rethink where their value is and what they do and how they do it.

The House Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage is holding hearings on new media and how to deal with that issue. They’ve been asking witnesses a few interesting questions that can apply here. What can Canadian cultural industries do to benefit from developments in emerging and digital media and to prepare for the future?

I think the same is true in cultural industries as it is in media or all industries. The more they can collaborate, the better. That doesn’t mean everybody is going to become a reporter and that everybody is going to start making movies, but the opportunity that we see, from just YouTube alone, is that there is a tremendous creative impulse out there. Again, some of that is just to put up pictures of flaming cats. But within YouTube there are some real gems.

I talked to somebody today from Google who said there is more Canadian content on Google than there is in all the media in Canada. There’s tons of creativity out there. I think the question is: how can you enable that creativity? How can you get people good exposure to an audience? How can you teach them to do it better? How can you help support them financially by putting together advertising networks and audience networks? It’s not about controlling an old structure. It’s about enabling new growth.

And another question in these hearing is, what policies could the federal government adopt to help Canadians and Canadian cultural industries benefit from developments in emerging digital media?

My glib answer is stay out and let it happen. But that’s my American perspective. I think that there are opportunities to encourage development, with education, for example. Media tools are now incredibly easy and becoming less expensive by the day. But sometimes I think people need to learn how to use them and take away the fear of using them.

Government can help people to simply learn the tools. Second, ubiquitous broadband will be the single best accelerant to the creation of media, companies and value. When everyone is online, we get to share more. We all get to create more. We’ll have larger audiences. Really aggressive broadband policy is the single best thing that a government can do. 

I’m glad you brought that up because my next question is about the Federal Communications Commission’s national broadband plan. What are your thoughts on that and should Canada follow suit?

[Canadian writer] Robertson Davies always said Canada is less like America and more like Scandinavia. I would follow the Scandinavian example. Do what Finland is doing and declare broadband access a right. That goes far beyond what the FCC is doing.

What are your thoughts generally on the investments the FCC is putting into broadband? Is it enough?

The problem in broadband today, and the discussion of net neutrality in the U.S., is that access is controlled by a monopoly or a duopoly in most towns. There’s too much control and too little innovation, and so on. I think technology will come along that will open us up to a much more competitive marketplace. When that happens, I’m extremely optimistic about where we can go. The question is how do we bridge this gap from this monopoly era to an open era in technology and connectivity?

Do you have any answers on that end?

No. I spoke to someone today from Google who answered rather happily that, in Canada, you have CRTC regulations that enable an ISP [Internet service provider] to control the traffic in some ways and not in other ways, not to be discriminatory. As an American I am jealous of that. So I think that’s one way to deal with the present limitations of a monopolistic access market.

But what I think you want to do is encourage new technology as much as possible. For example, Google is arguing to move the white spaces, freed up when we move to digital TV, to super Wi-Fi. That’s beautiful. The more we open up to unregulated space like that … it will be a great thing.

What do you think of pay walls?

I have no objection to charging for content. I have a book I’ll be happy to sell you. Charging for content is a fine and wonderful thing that has worked for many years. But I don’t think it’s going to work for news online for a number of reasons.

One is that news is information and once information is gone it’s a commodity. Two is that the way that news is going to be spread today is by being part of a conversation, by being open. Three is that if you want Google juice and new audiences, you have to be open. You can’t be behind a wall. Four is that you’re going to find no end of new competitors who can do this for less or free. The idea that you can still control this world and bring people behind a wall is naïve, and it’s potentially destructive because there’s other value to be had in this relationship that we’ve only begun.

In the news industry, our engagement numbers are pitifully low. So we need to be more involved and more engaged with our communities and not put up walls. There’s also new value to be had. The Telegraph in London made a quarter of its profit a year ago from selling merchandise. Other newspapers are doing things like selling education training. That’s becoming more like retail. I don’t know of a store that puts up a pay wall at the door before you come in to buy.

Tell me a bit about this idea of “publicness.” Apparently that is going to be the topic of your next book.

We have so much talk about privacy. And that’s fine. I don’t disagree with that. I think we need control over information, our creations and our identities. But I think we risk, in this privacy mania, losing the value of being public. When we’re public we make connections and the Internet is really just about that. It’s about connections. Whether it’s about finding a date, or a spouse, or a job, we also share our information. And when we try to hide that information, we give up value. By being open you also become collaborative. You open up your process to people to help you and you gain more value. Finally, the public sphere is ours. We the public own it and if you diminish the value of the public sphere, if you let people shut it down, you take away from us, the public. I think we need privacy advocates but we also need publicness advocates. That’s what I want to try to be.

Our privacy commissioner here in Canada has been very public with her criticism of Google Buzz.

Google made mistakes with Buzz but they fixed them the same weekend. They fixed them immediately. They learned. I don’t think that it was a cardinal sin. In the letter that the privacy commissioner of Canada and a handful of other [commissioners] sent to Google, they objected to the idea of Google putting up betas. That’s absurd, but I think it shows the cultural differences that exist between technology companies and government regulators.

Government regulators, like old industries such as media, think you can package and perfect the world. Technology people know that you’re never done with the world. You’ve always got to try things and you’ve got to make mistakes. That’s the only way you’re going to grow. So I think government regulators should not make technology companies scared of development. That’s the worst thing they could do.

jmigneault@thewirereport.ca

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