Marketing firm Eloqua, whose clients include Ellie Mae, Sony, McAfee, and Wisdom Tree, hired a journalist for their content marketing in 2010. Eloqua, despite being a marketing firm for other companies, was lacking in their own content and their blog was suffering from too low of postings and not being properly indexed. To fix this issue, Eloqua hired journalist Jesse Noyes, who previously worked for The Boston Herald.

After hiring Noyes, Eloqua saw double the unique visitors, an improvement in revenue for Q1 and Q2, and their blog even won an award. All because of hiring a journalist to create their content.

It’s not just marketing firms wising up to the prospect of hiring a journalist: huge tech companies like Google are also recruiting journalists for their own content marketing and research departments. Former social media writer over at CNET, Caroline McCarthy, now works for Google. And we are seeing an increased trend of consumer brands hiring journalists to tell their story (its really worth a read of this post for some great examples).

Journalists are already taught the importance of quality content and possess the very important skill set of information gathering, proper research, and implementation. While marketing professionals may seem like a good idea, someone with an editorial background can make a superb addition to your marketing team.

Here is some advice Brian Kardon of Eloqua originally shared on Eloqua’s blog, after hiring their journalist:

• The journalist isn’t a marketer, and therefore has better scrutiny over what will resonate with readers. Also, don’t pressure the journalist to sell something–let them create a story for your company.
• The journalist is indeed part of the team, make them feel at home and integrate all of their ideas with the marketing team’s strategies.
• Measure every bit of content and make sure your content marketing is keeping numbers high. Although, a journalist can find this to be easy work.

The modern day journalist uses a range of tools, for search and trend discovery, curation, writing, multi-channel publishing, and measurement. And the more progressive companies are investing in toolkits that do multiple of the above, so that their content marketing can be more integrated and measurable.

Building this competency into your marketing team is vital, as content creation and curation takes a fundamental role in modern day marketing.

The first problem Bradshaw cited, was multi-channel.

Previously, broadcasters were used to developing content for single-channel – such as print or television – and would simply duplicate their single-channel content for the web, with little or no appreciation of user-experience or the nuances of the online medium. The effect was a “shovelware” approach.

Now, media organizations have acclimatized to a multi-channel broadcast landscape and develop tailored news content for the web with multiple Editors across various online platforms.

The second problem, Bradshaw identified, was real-time.

Once media organizations became accustomed to developing content for the web, the importance of being able to publish or broadcast very quickly became increasingly apparent.

One way in which media organisations have remedied this is by the creation of the ‘live-blogger’ whose on-the-spot blogging could quickly capture the events unfolding and quickly by-pass restrictive editorial processes.

The third problem, according to Bradshaw, was the how to make the volume of content generated valuable.

As media organizations continue to execute a multi-channel strategy, the wealth of data that they are producing will continue to increase exponentially.

Bradshaw described some of the ways that broadcasters are beginning to make sense and categorize the constant stream of data that they are dealing with. One solution mentioned was aggregation. By curating quality editorial articles, aggregation of material from third party sites can significantly lower average article cost, whilst broadening the scope of the publication, and providing more value for the readers.

He also mentioned that tag-driven content (categorising content in detail to allow to be quickly repurposed and filtered), has allowed media organisations to quickly structure and re-publish content in ways that make the content increasingly useful, and therefore valuable.

Whilst media organizations continue to optimise the concerns above, an increasingly pressing problem is on the horizon; the problem will be one of future-proofing.

As Professor Bradshaw said:

“All of that information [generated currently] has to be used for future context and news apps…for products that we can’t even imagine, based on the assets we are building now”

Professor Bradshaw went on to raise two prescient points with regards to content archiving of the future:

• Archived content needs to be flexible
• Archived content needs to be reusable for future commercial opportunities

We have written about this at length, as it is a matter close to our hearts. To learn more about freed content, or intelligent content, or agile content (whichever name takes your fancy), see Content Must be Freed.

Businesses are becoming increasingly driven to get involved in more large scale content creation, and no wonder. We recently covered the reasons why businesses incorporate content as a new marketing platform. Kaufman highlights how it isn’t easy to identify patterns that drive companies to do this, even less so in understanding why some succeed and some fail in the pursuit of ‘riding a new wave of content to profitability’.

One of the interesting anecdotes Kaufman talks about is his initial post-English degree dream of writing quality articles on various themes and topics, and the gradual realization that it wasn’t quality that boosted them in the internet popularity poll. Of course, now we recognize that this is the world of SEO content-driven traffic, where content farm companies may win, but users definitely lose and have to foot the bill of paying more time and labour in ‘finding quality content that addresses their intent in the quickest way possible’.

A summarized breakdown of the process of content creation would follow the lines of:

1. Synthesizing information from different sources – Aggregating blocks of information that can be translated into raw research.

2. Combining this into a reasonably coherent narrative – A trick in every English degree student’s sleeve, but intelligent curation tools now sift and automatically filter for, and thread by, relevance using detailed metadata.

3. Writing an ‘original’ article - As a result of  pressure to write fast, attract an audience, and keep it short, the output often follows the “Top 10″ or “How to” format.

‘Quality Trumps Quantity’ Business Model Doesn’t Always Work

Of course, as Kaufman details, it’s always tough for any content writer to discover that the real purpose of churning out articles was less to enlighten and touch the hearts of many, and more to appease the gods of advertising: ‘I was trying to trick Google (and by extension, the reader), into clicking on my article, and hopefully an ad, instead of the site that would actually get the information they were looking for.’

This led to some structural changes in the way he and the companies he later got involved with planned on providing ‘spam-free search results compiled by actual humans’. But to do that would actually take much manual labour toward page creation in order to handle the millions of queries processed each day. Something had to give, and original strategies were eventually trounced and replaced by the great page view chase.

The important thing to learn from this, is that focusing efforts on Google search traffic is often easier than trying to coax people into coming to you directly for your content. Kaufman highlights how often businesses will discover a method that works, but the next step is to find a way to do it ‘quicker, cheaper and in greater quantities’. Essentially, quality and even accuracy is compromised in order to find exactly that. Still, that’s not to say the audience is stupid. Both they and the G giant will catch on, and eventually new technology will be introduced and bred to remove sub-par content that won’t lead search engines and users into the same trickery again.

At the end of the day, real value only comes out if your goals include not only terms of profitability, but also trying to endear yourself to an audience and winning trust. That means there needs to be a balanced diet of more content, but reliable, high-quality content too. The better your content, the more likely you will be ‘linked to, shared, tweeted, liked and mentioned-which are all factors that will increase your authority’. Compromising on quality may push you forward for a while, but eventually there will be a backlash. As Kaufman finished off, ‘it’s the experience of landing on a page and being able to locate the information or functionality you’re looking for in the shortest amount of time and in the most intuitive way possible’.

The awards have been running for 10 years, with individuals, teams, publications and companies recognised and rewarded for outstanding work during the year, across a range of areas. This year the award ceremony will take place at Roundhouse, Camden in June.

Idio is happy to report that the The Media Briefing has been nominated for Independent Digital Publisher 2011, along with their Editor, Patrick Smith, being nominated for Digital Editorial Individual 2011.

Established in 2010 by B2B media executives Rory Brown and Neil Thackray, The Media Briefing is the real-time news and information resource for the media industry. After less than a year of operations, they are already getting major industry attention, with a successful conference on Paywall Strategies earlier in the year.

Idio has been proud to work with The Media Briefing, utilising our semantic technology to intelligently classify and curate the insight of hundreds of publishers, along with specially commissioned experts.

‘What is journalism?’ is probably a very elementary but necessary question to ask right now. In the olden times of pre-2000, what made it easy for people to distinguish between respected journalists and ‘filler’ journalists used to be the sheer quality of reporting they delivered; solid investigations, probing questions and impressive sources. Today, the nature of all those factors has changed. This video titled ‘The Rise and Fall of the TV Journalist’ really encapsulates this. It’s a little bit old-school, a little bit more critical in its review of the profession, but some key observations really flesh out what is going on today.

Cutting out the middleman
In the video, it’s pointed out there was a time in TV journalism where journalists turned to the audience to help them out a little bit. Citizen journalism was born. CNN does this with great aplomb on TV and online now: their iReport features users from literally all over the world; they help shape reports on the ground, with the additional necessities of photographs, eyewitness accounts, mobile video footage, etc. This has been emulated by print newspapers and news magazines as well. With most online editions come blank canvases inviting users to move from readers to participators. On top of that, for anyone with so much as a dial-up connection, this has been made easier just by the sheer shareability link between social media platforms, accessible news websites, and the user.

Still, there are some areas of contention. Citizen (or public) journalism is one of those gray areas that no one really wants to hash out, mostly because it’s so easily encouraged or criticized. Although today anyone can pretty much be a ‘citizen’ contributor, the liability comes when the integrity of a news feed (whatever its format) comes under fire. Journalists are, after all, supposed to ‘tell us what the world is like’; but in today’s sharing-crazed outlook, it seems there can be tendencies toward those trusty old sidekicks, Copy and Paste. Ultimately, modern citizen journalists seem to be more like ‘content curators’. The former might collect, report and disseminate information, but content curators will be able to do all that on a far larger scale than before.

A community that works together, curates together?
Some think that the ‘open democracy’ would never make it in the long run: like the video touched on, there was a vicious cycle of journalists looking to citizens, who, despite all their best local-news contributions, were looking to journalists to do their job of explaining the world to us. On top of that, much criticism rises up against not just citizen journalism, but any websites or online destinations that try and turn user-generated news into a business model; citizen journalists will –rightly- want to be paid for stories that are selling, yet such news engines will be too cash-strapped for that kind of exchange.

Too true. I recently wrote up a post on a report that discussed how business journalists were riding the social media wave. What we learn there is still applicable here: social media is the common denominator for both journalists and citizens. This is why the term ‘community curation’ is probably a more perfect union portraying how journalists are becoming like citizens and citizens can still tap into their inner Anderson Cooper. The emphasis is on the fact that online, the scope of what journalists and citizens can work with is exponentially greater than just local coverage (for amateurs) and incapacity to be on-site of breaking news all the time (for professionals). Even journalists have their own Facebook page, such as New York Times journalist Nicholas D. Kristof, whose 208,760+ fans receive hourly updates of his reportings. This article also demonstrates how community exchange is affecting journalism: Of a study of 341 journalists, nearly 80% believed bloggers were becoming important opinion-shapers, with one respondent pointing out something very interesting: “Social media is changing the profession. It has enhanced the dialogue between audience and writer and expanded the scope of those who can participate in disseminating news.”

A couple of examples:

Still, this is a fairly new testing ground. Different things are working for different people. For example, in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, there is a unique ‘half Twitter, half telephone’ system of citizen journalism in a tribal community where 80 million Adivasi are able to access state and national news by the minute. Three professional journalists moderate, verify, edit and then publish the news that is called in or tweeted by citizens.

The booming landscape of community curation is only compounded further by sheer evidence of its effects and how it is indeed shaping journalism. It’s the reason why everyone remembers where they were on September 11, or Boxing Day 2004, or last month when Japan suffered a triple blow that put Hollywood to shame. Almost real-time footage and reports flooding in were rapidly uploaded but filtered enough through a tunnel system of readers and viewers so that in the end, we have a pretty accurate idea of what happened.

Now the interesting thing is that community curation has increasingly branched out into new arenas. This year’s ripple effect of Middle Eastern and North African revolutions were testimony to how people are taking social media as more than just news and more than just a mouthpiece. Suddenly we see a woman not only take a social network to ‘report’ on a stand against the government, but we see the community respond back and address a 30-year old problem. Just over two weeks later, a dictator steps down. These kind of cause and effects are incredibly hard to ignore.

Facebook = A social newspaper?

Interestingly, Zuckerburg might be thinking a few steps ahead. An article in February implied that a Facebook-only news organization could be in the works. This really shows the incredible speed at which things are taking shape (or retaking shape); where Twitter was and still is a favorite form of sharing tidbit journalism, it’s no doubt that the community curators are definitely looking on to Facebook’s increasing utility and application. After all, as far as community goes, this particular one is 500 million strong and growing. The article also mentions that the company is making concerted efforts to ‘directly work with journalists by providing training and resources’, which would explain the new opening for their ‘Journalist Program Manager’ position. [Note: Just checked again, position's been filled so they're probably serious]. Even before Facebook headquarters’ intention to expand this idea though, it seems some were already getting the ball rolling. While some groups were formed as an appendage to original websites, Helpareporter.com was actually formed from the original Facebook group, intended to connect reporters and audiences to find out stories, sources and generate leads.

The plot thickens though. Apparently Facebook is spreading its wings towards Washington too, spending almost $500,000 a year on lobbying with 2 lobbyists in place in the capital. The company ‘shows politicians what it does and helps journalists…develop new forms of storytelling’. That is one big stage to perform your show-and-tell on. Again, this reveals a lot about how even huge organizations recognize that news reporting and the profession of journalism isn’t growing old, but getting one heck of  a makeover.

It’s evident that the concept of community curation is being taken very seriously, and bigger things are expected to branch out of existing technology and communities that are themselves ever-changing. At the end of the day, it’s important to see the truth in what someone deemed as one of the rules of using Facebook for journalism, but can be applicable to the concept of community journalism in general:  “the community won’t share with you unless you’ve shared with them.”

The role and scope of a journalist today have certainly changed dramatically from what it was 50, 30, even 10 years ago. This report on the use of social media among business journalists highlights the speed at which journalists across the world have adapted to this new frontier.

The study was based on responses from 1,082 business journalists from more than 35 countries, (mostly in North America, UK and mainland Europe, but journalists from Asia pacific, the Gulf region and rest of the world were also involved). Half of those surveyed were of editorial ranking, but reporters, correspondents and freelancers were also included. The main picture we get is: journalists are overall supportive of the way social media has been reshaping the landscape, but different methods of application certainly exist.

In which ways and to what extents are journalists using social media?

Let’s take a look at one of the stats graphs (below) from the report. While the report hints that journalists still ‘rely on traditional information sources’ it’s probably safe to say that primary research accounting for only 24% of information sources last year is hardly a winning majority for traditional journalism. Social networking sites (Facebook, Linked In, etc.) are quite popular at 32%, but first place for Most Important Source of the Year, at 43%, actually goes to blogs and microblogs (and by the latter, you can’t get any more micro than the 140 characters-bound Twitter facility). It’s impressive to see that the garnering of information from online sources is now almost twice as much as previously treasured ones, like printed business media, (only 7%), information directly from companies, 21%, and even online business media at 25%. This is really interesting, because it reveals that it’s not just the sheer accessibility or data richness of the Internet that makes the statistics so high for some, but rather an indication that more journalists appreciate instant, almost real-time data and reaction feedback from the online community.

Brunswich Research (p.3)

The impact of these new communications tools has done much more than just impress journalists into embracing social media. The survey included asking business journalists if they’d ever been prompted by blogs to write a story. An incredible 74% said they had indeed, although only 47% carried the story to the end. Despite this number, most journalists said that social media does not inspire the major proportion of their stories, with only 2% saying that it does. Only an even smaller percentage-so small it’s unnumbered on the pie chart-said that social media inspired ‘almost all’ their stories. In which case, are these actual journalists? Or professional copy-and-pasters? On the other hand, adding to the interesting mix are the 33% who say that none of their stories are sources from social media. Again, are these actual journalists? Or modern hermits? Jokes aside, it’s starting to look very obvious the many but diverse ways in which social media tools are embraced, wielded and cast aside by professionals in this industry.

The true measure of the permeance of social media into journalism can probably be seen in how much journalists consider it as a valuable information source. Even though blogs rank the highest source of inspiration for stories, when it comes to the most valuable source of information, it was the Twitter machine that received the highest votes at 28% of sources, followed by Linked In (26%), blogs (18%), and Facebook, (17%). Interestingly, news sites scored only 3%, (talk about collapsing business models) and Youtube fell to the bottom of the rank, at 1%. Ironically, it’s hard to ignore that many online news engines have Youtube videos depicting event footage embedded within its stories, certainly a feature in journalism that’s evolved.

These stats do run concurrently though with the fact that half of all business journalists surveyed said that they tweet, are active in social networking sites and write blogs. Only one in five post on message boards. This is hardly surprising. Frankly, message boards are the cave drawings of this new era: pretty non-diverse in terms of topics and ever so dated. It’s easy to see why journalists would, like anybody else, favour the incredible speed and variation of information that is hotwiring across spaces like the Twittersphere.

Geography:

The report though in that it indicated some interesting figures in what the growth of social media in journalism means geographically. For example, take blogs, including the mini versions like Twitter, where the UK, at 47%, and North America, at the leading 51%, each surpass the rest of the world (excluding mainland Europe) which is at 43%. Social networking sites rank second among journalist sources but still lower for each of these regions: North America at 37%, the UK at 34% and the world minus mainland Europe at 32%. The low rate of some European countries compared to the others in the West can partially be explained by a tight control held by reigning governments, (Italy’s Berlosconi’s ownership included 3 national television stations and 40 magazines).

What are the positives and drawbacks for journalists with this?

The report also asked journalists what they thought about the future importance of social media on the angle or content of stories; an incredible 72% agreed that social media would play an ‘increasingly important’ role. But! On the impact of social media on the quality of written stories, only 37% said it’s been a positive experience and with a 52% majority resting on an elusive ‘neutral’. For such a big crowd in the current social media party, it sure raises questions about the integrity of journalism in the long run. On a side note, the question perhaps really should be ‘What kind of journalists account for the 5% who actually answered ‘don’t know’ in each pie graph?’ What are they doing? What doubts do they have that suggest such serious potential problems?

Geographically, one thing is for sure; the impact of social media on quality of written stories is considered ‘positive’ by North American journalists who once again take the biggest slice of the pie (chart) with 44%, while everyone else ranges from 30-38%.

All these changes in the collective outlook of journalists help explain at least partially why the journalism business model has been reinventing itself for a while now, (‘Paywall is to journalism as Iron Curtain is to Cold War’ etc.) Interestingly, while social media have been a major common denominator steering this, the stats for the use of actual social media monitoring is shockingly minimal. 92% of all business journalists don’t use any social media monitoring tools like Radian6 and Nielsen’s Buzzmetrics to track content in the social media sphere, and an even more befuddling 91% of journalists whose stories originated from social media don’t either.

Surely there is some correlation between the fact that the majority of journalists remain dubious that social media play a positive role in long-term story value and the fact that NINETY-TWO percent don’t use monitoring tools? Hmm. Not to stress too much on this, but as this place likes to churn out, ‘You can’t develop good editorial content for your media outlet without knowing how to “commit journalism.”’

Marketwire did a similar survey on a smaller scale with just about the same ratio of results. One of them, when asked for a comment about social media’s remoulding of the profession, answered, ‘It is full of peril and promise’. That it is.

Although, thanks to social media, we can also write articles that make things so much more fun for readers by using snazzy hyperlinks like this, and this, and most importantly this…

The HuffPo

Aol have acquired not only a ferocious and driven editor-in-chief, but a new publishing model. The HuffPo has the following aspects of note:

• a lot of aggregated and curated content to enable a massive publishing volume, including a mass of unpaid contributors
• high visibility on search results (partly due to the above)
• an analytical approach (story titles, and which stories are featured on the front page, are determined by AB testing for click-through rates)
• a technological approach (for example, HuffPo bought Adaptive Systems to automate the comment moderation process using semantic technology)
• last, but not least, for it is this that separates HuffPo from aggregators or content farms, they pay some very good journalists and commentators to create lead editorial pieces and pull up the average quality of content

The Content Pyramid

This model reflects what we have been doing with our clients. Building a good mass of relevant content, using community, external and internal sources, and then leading it with well-planned and executed premium content.

Here are the key elements:

1. The editor becomes a voice rather than just a content creator. Some of the content is other peoples’, curated. Some is original. The aim is to provide value to readers, and thereby build influence and authority in the market.
2. The community-generated and syndicated content allows for a much higher content volume, which is vital for good search rankings, and is curated to allow the editor to maintain their voice.
3. The variety of content types and sources help meet the individual needs of the audience members, providing snippets, links away, full reporting, and varying opinions.
4. Because of the reduction in time taken to create new content, and the percentage of content that is authored by the editor, the average cost of an article goes down dramatically. And that’s good news for the guys trying to make a publishing P&L balance again.

The insight gained from the wealth of interactions with the huge amount of content bubbles up and significantly shortens the idea generation process and production cycle of original content.

And

The influence gained from the market-leading content that is authored by the editor trickles down and increases the authority of all content.

On that last point, when someone I read regularly tweets a link to another site, I follow it. The authority of a good thought-leader really does trickle down in practice to their every activity.

The Technology

The challenges we are busy solving include:

• How can each piece of content, regardless of its format or source, be analysed across the same dimensions so that they can be compared and used within the same system?
• How can this much increased pool of content be targeted and recommended to individual audience members. based on their explicit and implicit preferences and behaviours?
• How can each user-content interaction be tracked, to deliver better value for that individual reader next time (ie some prefer short articles, some might only read tweets, and some only read about certain topics)?

It might sound simplistic, but from an editorial perspective its a great little framework to help editors get to grips with the benefits of blended content production.

On the quality argument:

Media is the connective tissue of society. It is not something created by professionals for amateurs.

If you are asking “Why do people spend more time on silly blogs and online games than my quality news site?”, then you are asking the wrong question. Just because people consumed quality broadcast content when they had no other choice, does not mean they valued it for their quality alone, and will continue to do so when a world of interconnected communities is opened up to them.

Your apparent high-brow commentary on the degradation of quality media is about 700 years too late. A reduction in the cost of production does reduce the average quality, but not the maximum quality. That is improved as larger-scale experimentation occurs. And people choose what they want.

The meteoric rise of social media in all its forms shows that humans value personality not professionalism. I am not looking for an shiny-teethed American TV host, but for someone who is like me, and who likes me.

On publishing in general:

If a media channel or format does not listen to me and interact with me, it will not survive my generation.

I want to share and contribute. If you do not allow me to, I will leave and never return.

Content must be able to be time-shifted, and space-shifted. If I see a good TV programme, I want to be able to download it or stream it later that week. If I read an article online, I want to be able to bookmark it to read offline on my mobile phone. Your constraints are no longer my constraints.

Niche is the new mainstream. 2 billion people connected means that any niche hobby suddenly becomes “mainstream”. If I was an avid Myrmecologist (ant keeper – I’m not), I can instantly connect with multiple communities online, each containing tens or hundreds of thousands of posts, and a huge number of other like-minded people which whom I can share my ant-related musings. That might be a trivial example, but if I have a Malignant Fibrous Histiocytoma then the ability to connect with a large community of fellow patients is life-changing.

On trying to maintain the status quo:

If the rules do not relate to the reality, they are probably irrelevant, and I will probably ignore them.

If you give me freedom, expect me to use it in ways that you didn’t expect or necessarily want.

When anyone can make and distribute an identical copy are free, it’s pretty sensible to make sure you are selling things that can’t be copied. Your first answer should be about unduplicatable experiences, access, and communities, not DRM. The fundamental needs of humans are autonomy, competence and connectedness. If new tools, technologies, and accompanying transformation of societal behaviours fulfil these needs more effectively, they will be adopted. Regardless of what you do perpetuate the previous equilibrium.

On the battle between private and public:

The default setting is now open. Whether you are a government, a business, a community action group, or a person, I expect you to be open, and for my interactions with you to be public by default.

Data privacy is a massive issue, to you. To me it is normality when my friends, and yes, often the wider world, know where I went, what I saw, what I bought, and how I am feeling. Yes, this might change when more high-profile privacy invasions occur, but (probably unfortunately) only that, and not your whining, will persuade me to reset the public/private boundary.

I was listening to a video interview with Stevie Spring last week on The Media Briefing, and something she said jumped out at me:

“There will always be a place for the printed artefact… we are slowly entering an ecosystem where some content is temporary, that you just want to access, and some content is more permanent, and you want to own it, if only for a period of time. It’s not just about ‘collect and keep’. So I think we are transitioning almost irrevocably into artefact and access, and there will be room for growth in both, certainly for the foreseeable future.”

That’s a great way to look at things – and to hear Stevie say it so succinctly only increases my impression that Future is handling the changing media environment better than many of the traditional magazine publishers.

It all comes down to content packaging. Traditional content packages were primarily dictated by the scarcity of resources: paper, ink, lorries, space on the shelf, space for advertising etc. If the market wanted a long, in-depth analysis of a topic, a book was the best way to carry that content. And there was also a “collect and keep” factor at play. Magazines are clearly collectible for their more evergreen content and visual appeal, whereas newspapers are printed on cheap paper and it was literally true that “today’s news is tomorrows chip wrapping”.

Artefacts and access

I like “artefact and access” as a framework for publishing going forwards. It works across music (millions of people use Spotify and the like to access music rather than owning it), news (access is the primary goal here, so digital is growing and print is falling, and especially digital when delivered through always-on mobile devices), magazines (the printed copy is becoming more of a product than a content package, with quickly obsolete content published digitally rather than in the print format), journals (the searchability of digital means that although print remains a great delivery mechanism, subscriptions almost always give access to a permanent digital archive).

So the filter that we should run any channel decision through is the following:

Is this content being treated as an artefact, or is it accessed at a point in time as information?

It doesn’t mean print is dead. It just means print is used for what it does best – deliver a tangible product that people want to keep.

Some examples

In our office we love Contagious Magazine. The print product is a work of art. An artefact. And an expensive one.  The digital product contains a huge amount of additional data, which would be surplus to the requirements of a print product, but which is very important to be able to search, as and when there is a business need. Another example is the rise in music albums as more than just the music – for example, Radiohead’s “Ok Computer” was available as a Collectors Edition with extra demos, sessions, and live recordings, bundled in a great-looking package to try and provide an artefact to balance the audience that access the content (many for free, illegally).

To avoid labouring the point any further, lets move on…

Putting the customer first

This question forces publishers to look closely at their audience’s content consumption habits. This trend of increasingly customer-centric businesses is driven by a variety of forces:

1. Increased competition caused by the reduction of barriers to entry means the customer is more valuable than ever
2. Increased visibility of unhappy customers due to the popularity of user-generated media means satisfying them is more important than ever.
3. Increased transparency of data around user-content interactions, meaning that valuable insight can be gained from even a quick look at a basic analytics package.

The false hope of the iPad

I think this is where many newspapers and magazines have come unstuck with the iPad. They have seen the “artefact” value that can be delivered, and focused on creating very visually-interesting apps for their content. This fits with their traditional competency, but ignores the power of the iPad as an immediate, always-on, portable access point. There might be great buzz around good looking applications, but I am yet to be convinced that people value digital artefacts enough to pay a unit price for what is essentially consumable but not tangible. Time will tell…

So as these forces take effect, we are seeing publishers of all types make some very interesting choices. Those who don’t make a decision about going either way are in a difficult middle-ground, and indeed many are choosing to split even individual titles into two delivery options – one as an artefact, and one for access.