About Me & Disclosures

JEFF JARVIS is the author of Geeks Bearing Gifts: Imagining New Futures for News (CUNY Journalism Press, 2014), Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live (Simon & Schuster, 2011), What Would Google Do? (HarperCollins 2009), and the Kindle Single Gutenberg the Geek. He blogs about media and news at Buzzmachine.com and cohosts the podcast This Week in Google. He is the Leonard Tow Professor of Journalism Innovation and director of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism at the City University of New York’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. He has advised media companies, startups, and foundations and is a public speaker. Until 2005, he was president and creative director of Advance.net, the online arm of Advance Publications. Prior to that, Jarvis was 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.

This is a personal site.

DISCLOSURES

Business ties: I have consulted for various media companies. This has included the Guardian and NJ.com at Advance Publications, my former employer; Advance owns Condé Nast, Newhouse Newspapers, American City Business Journals, and Advance Internet, where I used to work. I have served on on the advisory board for Digital First Media along with Jay Rosen, Emily Bell, and Clay Shirky. Over a decade, I have worked on projects or spoken at the Telegraph in London, Burda in Germany, Stern in Germany, the Hindustan Times in New Delhi, The New York Times Company at its then-subsidiary About.com, Best Buy, Sky News, VH1, Hearst, Meredith, The Week, Hill & Knowlton, Holtzbrinck, Axel Springer, USA Today, Time Warner, Edelman, Publicis/Denou, the BBC, News Corp., GM, Avaya, Accenture, Bloomberg, and at various conferences and in these videos for SAP. I am on the industry advisory board for Vidcon.

I was a partner in Daylife, a news startup, whose investors included The New York Times Company, Getty, Craig Newmark, Dave Winer, Michael Arrington, Ken Lerer, and others. Daylife was bought by Newscred; I received nothing in that transaction.

I have had small angel investments in Ubermedia, Infinite Analytics, Covestor, 33Across, Black20, and Path101, the last two of which are no longer. I have been an advisor to Mode Media (née Glam), Free Range Content (Repost.us), and Wobbleworks (3Doodler). I have been listed on the advisory boards of Rayv, Brightcove, Consenda, and Technorati and received options in Brightcove; those relationships have lapsed. I declined an invitation to join Demand Media’s board of advisors. My book What Would Google Do? is published by HarperCollins, a division of News Corp. My book Public Parts is published by Simon & Schuster, a division of Viacom. My Kindle Single, Gutenberg the Geek, was published by Amazon.

I was a trustee of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and worked with them on media ecosystem projects in New Jersey; I resigned in 2019.

I have helped raise funds for my school from Facebook and Craig Newmark. I have been reimbursed for travel expenses to speak at Google events but do not accept fees from any technology company.

Media ties: I have worked for many a media company — Advance, Time Warner, Hearst, Tribune, Maxwell, News Corp., Knight Ridder — and know people and have friends in most of them. I have been turned down for jobs or contributor gigs, over the years (these are from the early years) at The NY Times, the NY Daily News, Paramount, and CBS.

Stocks: I own Time Warner stock (drat the luck), which is now a marketbasked of successor comapnies as well as Sirius. I bought Google stock in 2008 (at $512). I also own Amazon, Microsoft, and Intel. Most of my holdings today are in mutual funds because I’m a lousy investor.

Religion: Since I write about religion occasionally, you should know that I was raised Presbyterian (and my sister is a Presbyterian pastor) but I left the church a few times. Most recently, I went to a Congregational church (independent, not affiliated with the UCC). On religion, you could call me liberal (the people at my last churches certainly did).

Politics: I am a liberal: a centrist leaning left. I have voted for Democrats in most elections. In the 2008 primary, I voted for Hillary Clinton. In the general election and since, I voted for Barack Obama. In 2016, I openly supported and volunteered for Hillary Clinton. In 2020 I supported and contributed to Kamala Harris, then Corey Booker, then Elizabeth Warren. Now I am backing Joe Biden.