One concern he brought up that got me thinking, and now writing, is that it may be best to do one thing well rather than a bunch of little things sub par. I didn’t ask him to clarify, and I should have, but I presume he meant the one thing that we [journalists] can do well is create content, and the other things would be to act as a community directory or commerce platform. But as Jeff Jarvis has long contended, the new media journalist’s role will evolve, and some may say already has, from gatekeeper to gate opener. To be enablers rather than producers. That is, to treat readers as collaborators rather than just a set of eyeballs. There’s more information flowing online than ever before, and the journalist’s role is to help sort and make sense of it.

That said, my team and I prefer to call the community news site we’re working on an “information-sharing platform,” as we don’t want to pigeonhole the information found there as simply “news.” The information visitors can find there will come in a variety of forms, and our aim, in addition to creating original content, is to act as curators that connect visitors with information most relevant to them: where they are. In that sense, we are providing a service beyond what city council members discussed at their latest meeting, and might include the nearest dining options that include search queries “margaritas + patio + within 5 miles of current location,” for example.

We’re expanding our role, to be sure, but we don’t think of it as trying to tackle “a bunch of little things.” It’s all information, and we want to make sense of it in as elegant and streamlined a fashion as possible.

When his new book, “Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live,” came out, Twitter was abuzz with all the good things about it — so I Tweeted him. Of all the people with many thousands of followers I’ve tweeted, Jarvis has responded the most. For that matter, close friends—former roommates—respond to fewer tweets. He walks the talk he evangelizes in his book. In fact, the day I received the book as a Christmas gift, I mentioned him in a photo of it:

Early Christmas w/ the gf's fam. They already know me so well. @jeffjarvis #PublicParts http://t.co/aQgxEROf

December 22, 2011 10:00 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@MarkBauer

Mark Bauer

He retweeted it and even offered this advice:

@MarkBauer marry them

December 23, 2011 5:27 am via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@jeffjarvis

Jeff Jarvis

Though Jarvis tackles weighty topics as using the internet and open platforms to disrupt economies, governments, laws, social norms, privacy, etc., the simple and offhand correspondence in those tweets represents the premise of his book: the world is better when we share. My 300+ followers on Twitter instantly received an endorsement for the book, and the author himself, to my enjoyment, was able to respond.

I’ll spare the redundancies of a full review, but the book does force us to take a hard look at why we value privacy. Why on earth would we want to hoard information and knowledge when sharing has never been easier? (do I sense some John Donne in these ideas?) Fitness information that friends have shared on Facebook has encouraged me to begin exercising regularly, potentially setting me up for a long, healthy life. Along those lines, I benefit when friends share healthy eating tips. My my parents share grief experienced from bureaucratic tape by school districts in regard to the education for my kid brothers, it sets them up with a supportive network of people ready to lend a listening ear [eye] or offer advice. I’ve gained invaluable business insight (I was a journalism major, so business was a foreign concept to me) from those who share their knowledge, freely, on Twitter.

While I found myself nodding in agreement to just about every idea Jarvis put forth in the book, the heading titled “Publicness Protects Us” gave me pause, as the automatic response to any breech of freedom (by that I mean, government intrusion via surveillance; think: Big Brother) is the oft-cited Franklin quote: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

I’ll revisit that bit (literally, it’s just two and a half pages) in more detail later. In the mean time, think about how  your friends/family/community/world can benefit from what you share. Are you merely being smarmy? Adding to the noise? Or are you promoting some sort of greater good by contributing to the conversation?