When I saw Jeff Jarvis’ fisking of Pajamas Media’s/Open Source Media’s grandly misguided statement’s of purpose, my immediate reaction was that these guys were letting their boardroom patois slip over into their communications with their readers. As a carrier, it’s easy to recognize the disease.
Turns out, I was right:
So how did this happen in the first place? Back at the
beginning, certain, shall we say, paternalistically minded parties
(i.e., the guys in suits) decided that we should act like grownups, and
being as yet somewhat immature—at least as businesspeople–we did as we
were told.Which is how, one day, we ended up sitting around a
conference table listening to representatives from a "branding"
company. What followed is still a bit of a nightmarish blur, but it
involved a PowerPoint presentation on the history of names, and such
probing questions as, "If you were an animal, what animal would you
be?" (Which is how we almost ended up as Jellyfish Media.)Enough
said. So, in the spirit of "open source," we thought we’d tell you the
real story behind the reason for our name change. And hope that our
corporate parents will be satisfied with good grades and healthy
revenue.
A good lesson for all of us in the new new New media.
