Jeff Jarvis isn’t shy about his take on the future of journalism and the media business. One thing I like about his view of the future is that he describes an ecosystem of new voices, new business models and new channels. That certainly seems to be where we are, although I’d bet things will settle down from the current Cambrian explosion once we figure out what works and what doesn’t. In his recent post, The future of business is in ecosystems, Jeff posts the diagram on the right that lays out a future news ecosystem. He’s writing about general news outlets, but if we translate that to the tech press, “Hyperlocal sites” translate into specialty sites covering one technical topic, like storage or networking or even virtualization. “Local networks” aggregate and draw from those sites, something like Planet V12n or Gestalt IT. Just to be complete, we can stick academics and standards bodies in the “Publicly supported journalism” slot.

Gestalt IT is one of the new species in this ecosystem. Pulled together by Stephen Foskett, Rich Brambley, and Chris Evans, Gestalt IT aggregates and publishes independent voices in the tech blogosophere. From their “About” page, What is the Gestalt:

What is the best practice for modern IT infrastructure? That can be difficult to decide, especially when the interests of vendors of hardware, software, and services are involved. IT professionals are constantly bombarded by messages and products, so it can be tough to know who to trust.

The best move is to rely on the gestalt: the sum of the best sources of independent input.

Sites like Gestalt IT are bringing to the table something that’s gone missing from the tech press – real technical voices. I was recently talking with the VP of Marketing of a tech startup, who was observing that even 10 years ago the technical trade press had extensive testing labs and smart technologists on staff. They could take hardware and software and, while not exactly replicating a real world test, at least put it through its paces and get some objective validation of vendor claims. Times have changed, and ad revenues have dropped for the tech press just as they’ve dropped for the mainstream press. Those publication labs and those technologists have been let go. There are a few labs left out there, and there are lots of journalists who understand technology. But even those writers don’t have access to lab facilities and basically need to pull together stories from press releases and a few quick phone calls with customers. They’re not printing fiction — I’ll gladly read honest evaluations from customers any day — but they’re not digging deep into the technology to tell us what hands-on testing would reveal.

Who steps into this gap? I think there will be multiple entrants, including a new generation of analysts. But one of the obvious groups that are picking up the slack are bloggers, and the emergence of aggregation/publishing platforms like GestaltIT and SiliconANGLE. There are examples in other domains, like another site I’ve been enjoying recently, Social Media Today.

At Gestalt IT, the contributors are hands on technologists – they have 11 authors so far. Each contribution links back to the originating blog. The site is really shaping up nicely as a one-stop shop for commentary on enterprise technology and best practices, and I hope that their traffic is reflecting that, both to the home site and the sites of its contributors. Of course, since everybody has a day job, questions about bias and objectivity must be asked, but they answer them in the normal way we’ve learned in the blogosphere — complete disclosure. Gestalt IT combines that with a soupçon of editorial review just to keep everybody honest.

Why did they start Gestalt IT? The technology trade publications stopped paying them. There were no longer enough ads to support paying these highly-experienced technologists enough to make it worth their while.

So what makes moving to a model like Gestalt IT worth it for these experts? The answer is about changing the game and shrinking the market – call it the Craigslist Effect. At a recent event (more on that in Part 2 about the Gestalt IT Tech Field Day), I was talking with Gestalt IT co-founder Stephen Foskett about ads and ad networks. Would Gestalt IT be interested in taking some ad dollars from VMware?

Most enterprise technology blogs have minuscule traffic compared to the big sites. That translates to ad dollars corresponding to not even beer money, but in the words of Rod Haywood, enough revenue for a cup of coffee once or twice a month. The return on investment for most tech bloggers is much more about learning, fun, and career visibility — because they’re certainly not bringing in the cash. Currently virtualization blog sponsorships are in the hundreds of dollars per month, and it takes a lot of those kind of checks each month to bring you up to a technologist salary.

Stephen told me they weren’t interested in taking sponsorships at this time. Considering how much money we were talking about, giving up ads on Gestalt IT isn’t taking food out of anybody’s mouth. The lack of ads also means (1) less work for the publisher, Stephen; (2) a cleaner, faster-loading interface for the readers; and (3) a lack of editorial interference from any sponsoring vendors. Gestalt IT is all about the indirect benefits of blogging. If you want to just focus on the money part of Gestalt IT — since eventually we all do have to put food on the table — the business opportunities and career benefits coming out of a good technical blog can be striking. The benefits of having a higher profile voice in the online media technology conversation accrues to both the individual and his or her employer. Gestalt IT is meant to be a multiplier of this kind of influence.

Gestalt IT is in many ways very similar to Craigslist, and in fact Stephan mentioned them explicitly in our conversation. Craigslist has effectively shrunk the newspaper classified market by 90%. They are often criticized — both by MBA types and by the newspapers that are losing revenue — for not charging for most services and for not even showing ads. They are crtiticized for “leaving money on the table,” for not maximizing their revenue and shareholder value.  But CEO Jim Buckmaster has been quoted as saying that “users haven’t expressed an interest [in ads].” End of discussion.

For the Gestalt IT authors, remember, the freelance technology writing market was shrinking. If the market is going to zero no matter what, acknowledge that, charge zero, and create value in a complementary market. Gestalt IT isn’t in the business of competing for a shrinking pool of online ad dollars. The authors are no longer in the business of competing for a shrinking pool of freelance writing gigs. Instead, they’re participating in the growth of this new media ecosystem, and creating more for their themselves than they would be earning coffee or beer money.