So the latest debate on the demise of newspapers hovers over copyright law. Thinkers out there are saying that if only the feds enhanced news outlets' ownership of scoops, then they'd be able to net more Web traffic and thus more revenue, thus staving off insolvency.

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If Jeff Jarvis had his way, this post would not exist. In his new book "What Would Google Do?," Jarvis lays out a number of rules to help dead tree newspaper types and corporations in general face the new online reality--including "do what you do best and link to the rest."

Just like the newspaper industry he criticizes so frequently, What Would Google Do? seems like an attempt to make money off of content Jarvis previously gave away for free (his blog Buzzmachine apparently wasn't generating enough Google Ads revenue to pay the bills). Reading the book, one can almost imagine Jarvis opening up Google Docs, pasting in a series of blog posts, whipping out the thesaurus (or rather, firing up the search engine) and tapping out awkward transitions between each topic like a co-ed writing a thesis paper. That "link to the rest" rule, along with many other ideas Jarvis lays out, now has a catchier title then when it was a blog post titled Cover what you do best. Link to the rest. The general point is the same - in the age where everyone is a critic, why does every paper need a local critic? The link, writes Jarvis, changes every business and institution, but it's "easiest to illustrate its impact on news.

Read More "Attention Google Crawler Bot: JEFF JARVIS, WHAT WOULD GOOGLE DO?, READ THIS IT’S IMPORTANT" »