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Nov 26 2008 12:51PM EST

Jeff Jarvis Declares the Death of the Interview

Buzzmachine blogger and new media deep-thinker Jeff Jarvis was profiled today in the New York Observer, and, while he doesn't seem to care much for the resulting piece, it did provide an opportunity for one of the epochal pronouncements he's known for:

[W]hat 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 didn't say a single new thing to the Observer; everything I said I'd written already on my blog, so I was only drawn to repeat myself (and after four days of recording an audiobook, even I was sick of the sound of my own voice- - yes, it finally happened).

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.

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