Jeff (and Dave) on cutting out the middle man

While it's arguably somewhat lame to blame the reporter for not promoting his book ('What Would Google Do?'), the crux of journalist and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis's replique to The Observer is worth mulling over:

"(...) what really struck me in this process - and it is always good for a journalist to endure journalism - is that the interview itself is becoming outmoded.

I’ve noted before that Dave Winer (who, ironically, is beating me up for being too much the journalistic traditionalist) wisely refuses interviews, telling journalists that everything he has to say he has said online.

"(...) The process of the interview has the reporter hold all the cards in his hand: who he talks with and what he will reveal to each and what he will say in the end, without links to what any of the parties has said. Then the reporter gets to toss it all on the table.

A process of links and discovery and conversation and correction would be far more illuminating of the ideas and issues than this old process of control through the sieve (and efforts to trump up conflict and drama). That, you see, is the real moral to the story: It’s the form that’s bullshit. (...)"