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Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News is CUNY journalism professor Jeff Jarvis’s latest book, exploring the pressures on current news models and the directions news organizations need to go in order to thrive in the digital world. FIR co-host Shel Holtz reviews the book, which has implications for organizational communicators, particularly in imagining the role of media relations in the future Jarvis imagines.

From the book description on Amazon:

“Technology has disrupted the news industry– its relationships, forms, and business models – but also provides no end of opportunities for improving, expanding, reimagining, and sustaining journalism. Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News is a creative, thought-provoking and entertaining exploration of the possible future(s) of news by Professor Jeff Jarvis, who leads the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

“To Jarvis, journalism helps a community better organize its knowledge so it can better organize itself: “But we in the field came to define ourselves less by our value and mission and more by our media and tools — ink on pulp or slick paper, sound or images over airwaves. Now we have new tools to exploit. Those tools require new skills and create new value. But at the core, we serve citizens and communities.” He offers not a single definitive future of journalism and news, but a range of possibilities depending on how journalists and journalism evolve – with the help of the “geeks” whose advances in media technology offer many opportunities for journalists and media entrepreneurs who are willing to think creatively and take risks.

“Jarvis, one of the preeminent voices on emerging forms of journalism, news delivery, and community engagement, advises many media companies, startups, and foundations. He is a former president and creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications, and was the creator and founding editor of Entertainment Weekly; Sunday editor and associate publisher of the New York Daily News; TV critic for TV Guide and People; a columnist on the San Francisco Examiner; and assistant city editor and reporter for the Chicago Tribune.

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Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News

Publisher: CUNY Journalism Press
Hardcover, 234 pages
Published November 2014
ISBN-10: 1939293731
ISBN-13: 978-1939293732

Purchase at Amazon US (US Kindle edition), Amazon Canada (Kindle only), or Amazon UK (UK Kindle edition).

The book is also available for reading at no cost on Medium.

About Shel Holtz

Shel Holtz, ABC (Accredited Business Communicator), is director of Internal Communications at Webcor, a commercial general contractor headquartered in San Francisco. Before joining Webcor, Shel spent 21 years as principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. In addition to integrating technology into communications strategies, his expertise includes strategic communications planning, change management, organizational culture, business initiatives and communications research. Full bio