About the Authors:
David Eaves is an expert in negotiation and public policy, working with two spin-offs of the Harvard Negotiation Project, and serving as a fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen’s University. He blogs four times a week and publishes regularly in the Toronto Star and Embassy Magazine. David is frequent keynote speaker to policymakers and business leaders on the subjects of collaboration, open-source, public policy and the future of government. Originally from Vancouver, British Columbia David completed a Bachelor of Arts in history from Queen’s University and a Master’s of International Relations from Oxford.
Taylor Owen is a Doctoral Candidate and Trudeau Scholar at the University of Oxford, and a 2007/2008 Action Canada Fellow. He was a Graduate Fellow in the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, has an MA from the University of British Columbia, and has worked as a researcher at the International Peace Research Institute, the Liu Institute for Global Issues and the International Development Research Center. His research focuses on the definition, measurement and policy operationalization of human security and he writes widely on the causes and consequences of conflict, peacebuilding, and EU, Canadian and US foreign policy.
About Missing the Link:
In March, 2007 the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) hosted a panel (audio available here) with Steven Rattner, Jim Brady, Amanda Bennett, Jill Abramson, and Robert Kuttner (with Nicholas Lemann moderating). The purpose was to discuss an article the CJR had commissioned Robert Kuttner’s to write on the future of print media where he essentially argued that the then status quo of print-digital hybrids would ensure newspapers’ survival.
The CJR however, interested in the perspective of bloggers, invited Taylor Owen to write a response. He, along with his colleague David Eaves, ended up collaborating and wrote Missing the Link: Why Old Media Doesn’t get the Internet.
Ultimately we ended up writing a much longer piece, one that was critical of Kuttner and the print-hybrid model. In addition to the CJR we got a couple of sniffs from some other print journals/magazines (Wired for example) but they eventually could not get it published.
Ironically, we were more concerned with getting published (in print or digitally) than simply releasing it on our blogs. Part of this had to do with the piece’s length, but, if we are really honest with ourselves, we got trapped in an institutional mindset and began thinking like priests, not entrepreneurs. Eventually we got busy with other exciting projects and forgot about it (except for this op-ed we wrote in the toronto star).
Two years later the piece could do with some updating but sadly it is just as salient, if not more so, today as it was then. So we are pulling it out of the C drive and sharing it. Better late than never.
Of course, we aren’t devoid of our desire for a better channel. If anyone out there (Slate? Huffington Post?) finds the piece interesting and knows a home for it - print or digital - we would be happy to update it. Mostly, we just want it read.
In addition to reading the piece here you can download a PDF copy: Missing the Link: Why Old Media Still Doesn’t Get the Internet (PDF).