Jeff Jarvis knows how to start a buzz. Perhaps not at the level of Kim Kardashian, Kanye West or The Situation. But like his favorite radio personality, Howard Stern, he knows that he can attract an audience by literally talking about his private parts, including how his battle with prostate cancer mangled his and rendered him impotent.
That candor has given Jarvis visibility in an oversaturated market. The New York professor and media consultant known for his BuzzMachine blog has made himself into a brand via his contrary opinions, personal disclosures and snarky reactions and he continually pushes his clients and students to better brand themselves. Jarvis learned his methods from friends and colleagues like Nick Denton, founder of Gawker Media, and Steve Newhouse, the scion of the Newhouse family who runs the family-owned Advance.net, the online subsidiary of Advance Publications.
Before becoming a brand himself, Jarvis, 57, had a long career in traditional media following his 1974 graduation from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He was a TV critic for TV Guide and People in the early and mid-80s, then at Time Inc. created Entertainment Weekly. His tenure at the magazine was short; he left six months after its first issue in 1990 over disagreements with senior executives at Time Warner.
Traditional media still pays his bills. He advises some of the bigger media brands he has openly criticized, counsels bloggers and other Internet entrepreneurs, writes an online column on new media for the Guardian in the U.K. and directs the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism's interactive program. I was one of his CUNY students in 2007 and later worked with him on his New Business Models for News project in 2009.
Jarvis published his first book, What Would Google Do?, in January 2009 and his second, Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live, in September 2011. Jarvis talked to FINS about the key to self-branding and the importance of being open.
Damian Ghigliotty: How did you build such a strong brand around your name?
Jeff Jarvis: For years I had no brand around my name whatsoever. I used to be a critic at TV Guide and People Magazine, and you'd imagine that I had a brand, maybe, but I'd watch people read TV Guide and they would flip right past my page to get to the listings.
Once I started blogging after 9/11, I still didn't have a major online presence, but I was actively involved in public discussions. In staying active in the blogosphere and on other social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Google+, I've been fortunate enough to make a lot of acquaintances online. Those acquaintances have allowed me to better share my ideas.
But brand can be a funny word in some cases. When I talk about my prostate cancer and my penis not working, it's hard to imagine that I'm trying to brand that. I'm having a public conversation and I've found a benefit in doing so, like helping other men go get tested.
DG: When did it click that blogging and other social platforms could be such a powerful tool for you to build your public presence?
JJ: Right after I blogged about 9/11, I suddenly realized that I was talking to people I didn't know, and doing it without a media property. Before I started blogging, my friend Nick Denton showed me how it worked. My initial reaction was, "Big deal, you made a web page." I didn't see the impact at all at first.
Then Nick mentioned what I had blogged about to two other bloggers in L.A., Ken Layne and Matt Welch, and they each wrote about what I had written and linked back. That was my ding moment! That was when I realized what being a public presence means and the importance of the link in creating a conversation. After that, along came more tools. When Twitter came about I will confess that I didn't see the importance of Twitter either. My son showed me that.
DG: In terms of your popularity and self-exposure these days, how do you see yourself in comparison to Kim Kardashian and Howard Stern?
JJ: There's not much of a comparison. They are both professional entertainers and I'm not. I'm just a media wonk who happens to talk about that and other things in public. I definitely learned things from Howard Stern. The title of my second book is an homage to him and the story he tells in his book Private Parts, which later become a movie. He was bluntly honest with his audience because he felt it gave him credibility. He told people about his real life, including his small penis and that gave me the courage to talk about mine -- since we're getting down to brass tacks. But obviously he too has a private life that he separates from his public persona. Kim Kardashian, I have no idea. I have never seen her show.
DG: You switched jobs and publications several times since you started in media. Was that a setback?
JJ: Bouncing from one company to another is a lot more typical in media these days, but when I got into the business it wasn't as common. It has allowed me to be more entrepreneurial in what I do, which I'm thankful for, but it also presented some challenges for me when it came to making certain transitions in my career.
But it's not about how much more money I could have made. I make about $90,000 a year as a journalism professor and a little extra income from my blog, my books and the speeches I give. If I were in this for the money, I would be doing something else.
DG: After creating Entertainment Weekly and then leaving Time Warner, did you consider leaving the media industry?
JJ: I learned a tremendous amount as the founding editor of Entertainment Weekly and I vowed that I would also learn about the business of media going forward. That way I could protect my baby the next time.
I wrote my first memo proposing the magazine six years before it launched. To make a long story short, Time Inc. executives started getting visions of EW as a People Jr. even though the product and business models were quite different. That led to some expensive business mistakes: they invested heavily in newsstand distribution without ever telling me, the editor, so I produced a magazine for subscribers that ended up at supermarket checkouts. Editorially, our starting design was bad and we redesigned by the 15th issue. The top editors at the company panicked and so I saw the best thing for the magazine was for me to quit.
But I wasn't frustrated for a moment. I got the entrepreneurial bug at that point and wanted to be around start-ups. That's much of what attracted me to the Internet.
DG: For the past five to six years, you've encouraged your students and clients to think beyond the brands of big media. Why?
JJ: Blogging got me to think differently about media and then think differently about other areas tied to media like marketing and commerce. The Internet changes structures radically, so it all springs from me seeing that sudden change in the architecture of media. And so I've written things like "Cover what you do best and link to the rest," and realized that was a way for media companies to save money too. It's also become a way for them to be more collaborative and more open. If you're a blogger, you live for the links to you -- that's brand.
But suddenly media companies started to realize that they needed to do the same thing and then everyone within the media companies started to realize that they needed to do the same thing. It doesn't stop with media companies. It spreads to retail companies, which have become more and more like media outlets.
DG: Is this ecosystem becoming more clearly defined?
JJ: Yeah, but I think it's happening slowly. In media we see that there's this ecosystem that involves all kinds of new players, many of them smaller. Well, that's happening in every industry. I sat in on a conference one time and this private equity guy was quizzing the co-founders of YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter. He said to them, "What's the really big company you want to do a distribution deal with to really make you take off?" and they all looked at him like confused dogs. Then one of them responded, "Well, why would we want to do that? That would only make us smaller!"
They don't consider themselves parts of an industry, they consider themselves members of an ecosystem, and so their own users market to them, and help spread their brand and in some cases improve their products. It becomes far more of a collaborative structure and less of a closed industry.
DG: What are the best ways for people in media and marketing to earn a living without backing from a major company like Condé Nast or the New York Times?
JJ: Sure, do good stuff and spread it to others and join in other conversations. For years I've had media people come to me and ask, "How do I get traffic to my blog?" And I always say that the answer is to link out to get links back, because that's how you'll get discovered. Link out by adding to someone else's conversation and if they've discovered that you've done that, they'll link back and that's how you start to grow. So if you have value to add, that will start to blow your brand. But clearly you have to bring value. If you're the 500th blog covering the new iPhone, it's going to be really hard to break in.
Brian Stelter, now at the New York Times, started a blog in college called TVNewser and it very quickly became the definitive blog on what was going on in cable news -- who got the scoops, what was changing in the schedules, what executive changes were taking place. He did a brilliant job covering cable news journalistically, so that the whole industry was paying attention the blog, and he wrote it anonymously because he didn't want anyone to know that he was a 19-year-old kid in a dorm room at Towson University. But then the New York Times outted him in a feature on page one. After that he sold the blog to mediabistro and went with it, so he was employed by mediabistro during the rest of his time in college. And when he graduated college, where did he get a job? The New York Times.
DG: In cases like that, with one person wearing so many hats, do the lines between editorial and advertising, or the lines between selling a product and focusing on product development become blurred?
JJ: Absolutely, it's something you have to be conscious of all the time. We talk about church and state, and it becomes church on the left hand of your brain and state on the right hand of your brain and you have to deal with both. But in the beginning, especially, you have no choice.
A good example of that is Rafi Ali, who started paidContent.org. He started his blog not as a business, but as a resume and as a demonstration of his talent, so he could get a job. But then the business took off and it became his job. He's told us in our entrepreneurial classes here at the CUNY J-School that his first advertisers came to him and he didn't know what to do, so he sold his sponsorship. He then quickly realized that he had to understand the dynamics of advertising and set his own boundaries, which he did -- he's turned down advertisers because they weren't appropriate for his site. Since then he has covered media on his site and has also had media companies advertise there. He's had to deal with those conflicts and he's done a brilliant job of it. If he hadn't, he wouldn't have any credibility now.
DG: How has that experience been for you as a professor, journalist and media consultant?
JJ: I'm always aware of it. My first weapon is transparency. My about me page on my blog is obnoxious in its length, which partly is to prove a point. But it's also there for a good reason: to say that the people who read my blog have a right to know my business relationships, so they can judge me. And that's what's going to happen, they are going to judge me. They're going to say that I am an advisor to the newspaper company Journal Register and I am also a big fan of John Paton, the CEO. I think he's what the industry needs, but I do make money from Journal Register, so I've got to make that clear. Some may dismiss what I say because of that business relationship, but it makes me more aware that I have to make sure other people know about these connections.
DG: Do you still rely on old media?
JJ: I do. I was asked to do an op-ed for Time.com and it was in this morning. I've sent op-eds to absolutely no good end to the New York Times and the Washington Post. I've never been published by them, but obviously I still respect and care about that media if I haven't given up on reaching out to the editors. I just published my second book. Is it hypocritical of me? Should I have made it completely digital, linkable, searchable and commentable? Sure. But these platforms still pay and they still bring value.
Here's the irony: I push other people to be entrepreneurial in what they do, but I'm probably too old to be an entrepreneur myself. Youth used to be something you had to get over, now it's an asset.
Write to Damian Ghigliotty at Damian.Ghigliotty@dowjones.com
