Yes, by Jeff Jarvis' logic, the hardworking reporters now on the street were fools: They didn't spend their time figuring out how to multiplatform themselves. I think of that guy John Conroy, who wrote about police torture for years for the Chicago Reader, which is now bankrupt and had to let Conroy go just as—after years and years—Conroy's reporting (100,000 words!) on the subject was vindicated and an official investigation began at last. Dedicated guys who did great work at the dying dailies are being made to feel by Jarvis that they deserve to be downsized. Yet who has the most honor, the men and women who did the work or the media consultants who mock them?

(Photo by Jeff Jarvis)

When it became obvious that the audience was hostile to her — cheering Zuckerberg when he told her to ask a question — she acted hurt, as if this hour was about her. Worse, she told us how tough her job was. It wasn't tough. It was a privilege and she was blowing it. And at the end, when she said that people should send her an email telling her what went wrong, she was so 1994; she didn't understand that the people in the crowd were already coalescing in Twitter and blogs into an instant consensus. Oh, if only there'd been a back-channel chat projected on the screen beside her. Then, she could have seen.

I was cruising youTube looking for clips of Jason Calacanis' keynote speech today at the Blog Business Summit. Some of the blogs covering the talk had mentioned Jason was filmed and hoped it would be posted online in the near future. I didn't find JC at the BBS, I found something much better, 1938 Media going off on Netscape's Jason Calacanis, Buzz Machine's Jeff Jarvis collectively call them both a-holes for going after PayPerPost. I don't know who 1938 Media is, but he's my new hero.

WARNING, VIDEO CONTAINS UNCOUTH LANGUAGE!

Jason And Jeff Are Jerks [youTube]

Just like Christmas in July, New Year predictions deserve a mid-year refresher — especially since Valleywag wasn't here for New Year's. Valleywag predicts that by the end of 2006:

• Rocketboomers Andrew Baron and Amanda Congdon finally give into the sexual tension and get hitched. Media critic Jeff Jarvis reprises his role from "Moonlighting" by appearing on Rocketboom to explain it all. Rocketboom's ratings tank.
• Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, feeling threatened by a tidal wave of journalists predicting that he'll step down by December, barricades his office in November and insists on running the company from within. Sharp-eared employees can hear him urinating into bottles, wiping down his keyboard with sanitizer, and muttering, "The way of the future. The way of the future."
• Oracle founder Larry Ellison rediscovers his giving spirit and pledges a $200 million donation to Stanford, one week before the deadline for Forbes' next "Most generous billionaires" list.

The rest is after the jump.

• "Long Tail" breaks free of its scare quotes by Halloween.
• Blog mogul Jason Calacanis, realizing that AOL has given him the entire budget left over from the Access department, starts paying his circle of friends for "doing what they already do." Competitor Nick Denton starts eating lunch with Jason for $80 an hour.
• Three hours after YouTube and Facebook merge, the entire student population of America walks out of class in a rush to update their FaceTube profiles.
• After Lloyd Braun greenlights three expensive shows against everyone's advice, the Yahoo Media Group head finally gets fired. Weeks later, the shows go live, and Braun's "Puppet News Nightly" quickly becomes America's favorite Internet show.
• Dave Winer joins the Black Panthers, changes his name to Faqih, and leaves blogging for the promising medium of hand-out flyers.
• The Valley goes carb-counting-crazy when portly Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak loses 120 pounds and publishes his diet book, "Slim Down the Woz Way."

Photos: Amanda and Andrew by Scott Beale, Jeff Jarvis by Mary Hodder

Media pundit Jeff Jarvis, who wrote the epic "Dell Hell" blog chronicle about his trouble with customer service, is gloating over the disappointing blog from behind his Apple computer. He quotes the blog, in which an exec says that dell.com is ten years old. "Yes," says Jeff. "I think I spent about 10 years on hold with you guys."

one2one [Dell blog]
Well, well, Dell [Jeff Jarvis]

• Batting .000 on his New Year's predictions, Firefox developer Blake Ross rushes out a second batch:

  Citizen journalism will finally topple Old Media, ushering in a remarkable new age of incisive journalism—"That Dude Across the Street Walks His Dog;" "Local Mail Arrives Ten Minutes Past 4." Illegal immigrants will protest the discriminatory name, forcing the blogosphere to rechristen the new model "Asscasting," short for "Broadcasting while sitting on my ass, which will never leave this chair."

  [Blake Ross]

• The new site Relishio does a cannonball into the news-aggregation-site pool that's already full with Digg, Netscape, Newsvine, TailRank, and TechMeme. Its founders are either clueless, arrogant, or — oh, the founder is 14-year-old Jake Jarvis, son of blogger and entertainment pundit Jeff Jarvis. We're not going to make fun of an eighth-grader, are we? [Relishio]
• Why is it hilarious that IT titan EMC bought security titan RSA? Because I know at least one RSA employee who quit the company months ago and joined a startup that RSA bought. Life wants some people to work in huge corporations. [EMC]
• Is the Internet down? [Internet Status]

In the press release, Backfence touts itself as "a vital gathering place for local information and discussion that's not available anywhere else."

Except, of course, for the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News (well, until it dies), SFist, Metroblogging SF, Craigslist, Craig Newmark and Jeff Jarvis's upcoming site, local blogs, Upcoming.org, Laughing Squid, and every restaurant, cafe, conference room, college campus, and office in the Valley.

But hey, it's the new hotness, so gorge on the press release after the jump.

Welcome to Backfence [Backfence.com]

Backfence launched its first sites in McLean and Reston, Va., in May 2005 and has since added sites in Bethesda, Md., and Arlington, Va. Consisting entirely of content contributed by readers, the sites provide hyperlocal news coverage of the communities, as well as event listings, reviews and ratings of local businesses, photo galleries, free classifieds and other services.

"Backfence provides local community members with a vital gathering place for local information and discussion that's not available anywhere else," DeFife said. "It has been exciting to watch as each community creates a place that reflects its unique personality. We look forward to being part of the Bay Area and watching as it brings its own voice to Backfence."

DeFife said Backfence chose to launch its first Bay Area hyperlocal site in Palo Alto because "it is the linchpin of Silicon Valley. Its broad collection of community organizations, strong business and commercial base, high Internet penetration and its population base are the kinds of things we look for in deciding where Backfence should open local sites. We're looking forward to becoming an important part of the Palo Alto community and then launching additional sites in Bay Area communities over the next few months."

Both Backfence and Bayosphere received funding from Omidyar Network, the mission-based investment group founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar to foster social, political and economic self-empowerment. Bayosphere also received funding from technology entrepreneur Mitch Kapor.

Backfence also announced today that Merrill Brown, the founding editor of MSNBC.com and a leading new-media consultant, has been elected to the company's Board of Directors.

Brown, who had been a member of the Backfence Advisory Board for the past year, brings a wealth of media experience to the company's Board of Directors. He is a principal in MMB Media, a consulting and investment firm and was recently named National Editorial Director of News 21, the content development component of the news initiative launched by the Carnegie and Knight foundations. In addition, Brown was the founding Editor-in-Chief of MSNBC.com and a founder of Court TV. He also has been an executive with RealOne, Channels magazine and The Washington Post Co., and is a member of the advisory board of Gillmor's Center for Citizen Media.

"I'm very excited by the potential for Backfence to reinvent the way that local communities get and discuss local news and information. The company's concept for hyperlocal citizens' media represents a powerful new form of advertising-supported information, and I'm looking forward to helping the Backfence management team bring their concepts to fruition," Brown said. "I'm a longtime admirer of Dan Gillmor, and am pleased that he's working with Backfence. I'm confident that Bayosphere will be a vital part of Backfence's westward expansion."

About Backfence
Founded in 2004 by Mark Potts and Susan DeFife, Backfence (www.backfence.com) has headquarters in Vienna, Va. Backfence is building advertising-backed, hyperlocal community Web sites in which members of the community create virtually all of the content. Backfence sites bring together user-generated content tools such as blogs, photo galleries and events calendars, as well as do-it-yourself advertising tools. Backfence is designed to be easy for participation by everyone in the community. Access to the sites is free, and all that is required to post information is a simple registration. Backfence is supported by local and national advertising, including display ads, enhanced Yellow Pages listings and business classified ads—all priced low enough to make purchasing an ad to reach the Bay Area community a "cash-register decision" for local businesses. The company raised $3 million in funding in October 2005 from SAS Investors of New York, Omidyar Network of Silicon Valley, and a group of Washington-area private investors. The company has 10 employees.

About Dan Gillmor
Dan Gillmor is founder and director of the Center for Citizen Media, a project to enhance and expand grassroots media and its reach. The center is an affiliate of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University Law School and the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Gillmor is author of "We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People" (O'Reilly Media, 2004), a book that explains the rise of citizens' media and why it matters. From 1994 until early 2005 Gillmor was a columnist at the San Jose Mercury News, and wrote a weblog for SiliconValley.com. He joined the Mercury News after six years with the Detroit Free Press. Before that, he was with the Kansas City Times and several newspapers in Vermont. During 2005 he worked on media projects at Grassroots Media Inc., which was funded by Omidyar Network and Mitch Kapor. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Vermont, Gillmor received a Herbert Davenport fellowship in 1982 for economics and business reporting at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.