Jeff Jarvis and the future of media

I took a pass on the recent dust-up between Slate columnist Ron Rosenbaum and new-media advocate Jeff Jarvis. Jarvis can drive me up a wall, and I thought Rosenbaum made some good points about Jarvis’ Web triumphalism. At the same time, Jarvis is a valuable source of ideas, and, frankly, I have no interest in pissing him off.

But I can’t recommend strongly enough a long profile of Jarvis that appears in the current New York Observer. Written by the Observer’s media columnist, John Koblin, the piece is deep as well as sympathetic to Jarvis’ point of view — yet Jarvis’ critics have their say, too.

If you are looking for a good overview on the state of the news business — and especially the struggling newspaper business — then you need to read Koblin’s article.

And by the way, I can’t help but observe, Jarvis-style, that Koblin’s article would be better still if he and his editors had made the extra effort to link to what he was writing about.