Be allergic to bullshit.
(Source: creativemornings)
I am a huge fan of Infographs and coming up with creative ways of displaying information. This is an excellent multi-venn diagram that shows all the various aspects that leads to Data visualization.
(via Cool Infographics - Blog - What is Data Visualization?)
Publishers have stopped referring to their products as journalism, writing, literature, photography, or art. Today, everything is simply “content”.
Those working in media, especially digital media, can attest to the word’s popularity. Quantitatively we can observe this trend in the chart above: over the last ten years, annual financial reports from The New York Times have leaned more and more heavily on the word “content” when describing their business. The share of “journalism” has remained relatively flat.
The NYT and other publishers rely on the word “content” to help them understand the breadth of their output. But by reducing their writing, photography, videos and more to a single, nondescript term they’re setting themselves up for failure.
The Rise of “Content”
“Content” emerged with the rise of the Internet, which detached pieces of work from their primary media. Before the web, we referred to works by the media format which delivered them: as newspapers, magazines, paintings, photographs, records, CDs, and so on. As digital representations grew in popularity these monikers became increasingly awkward. Is a newspaper still a “paper” when the majority of its readers view it on screens? To abate this awkwardness, we began to search for a more apt term. We landed on “content”, a bucket term which we ask to describe anything a publisher could publish, from the most revelatory art to the most hackneyed rags.
At this point, “content” was an innocent, sloppy fix. A stopgap until the Internet settled down and a proper term could be coined. Unfortunately, the pace of innovation quickened and today language is unable to keep pace with rapidly emerging new ideas, art1, and businesses.
So we’ve stuck with “content”.
The Assumptions & Allure of Content
To achieve its representative breadth, the word “content” makes two assumptions:
- Each piece of “content” is equal and is therefore interchangeable: As stated earlier, “content” is used to represent a wide breadth of works. A Pulitzer winning report and a Business Insider slideshow are both single instances of “content.” The word must remain formless, devoid of emotion, and of indefinite form and quality. Any characteristic which might differentiate two works must be ignored. This rhetoric categorization gives rise to the second assumption.
- “Content” production is trivial: Since each bit of “content” is interchangeable, “content” is only as hard to create as the easiest instance.
Publishers buy into these two assumptions because “content” allows them to easily measure and analyze their output. Messy qualitative measures are hidden so output fits neatly within Excel cells. This is the allure of “content”: it allows comforting, structured data which simplifies the complexity of a large business and makes decisions less intimidating. Executives aren’t making qualitative picks regarding art or an artist, they’re merely signing off on whichever “content” produces more valuable metrics.
At The New York Times it’s conceivable that editors and executives have a handle on their output. But businesses with strategies dependent on massive levels of “content” production cannot know the quality of everything that ships. Think YouTube, where users upload more than an hour of video every hour. Or content farms like Demand Media, which claims to have created 2 million articles and 200,000 videos as of June 2010.
The Four-Year Career
Lessons from the new world of quicksilver work, where “career planning” is an oxymoron.
Great read. Highly suggest this one. My favorite line:
“In the future, says Gorbis, “everything that can be routinized, codified, and dissected will eventually be done by machines. Social and emotional intelligence is what humans are uniquely good at—at least for the next decade or two.”
![Agree 100% with this
fimoculous:
I wrote this thing for Nieman Journalism Lab’s Predictions for Journalism 2012:
LA Is the Future (Kill Me Now)
Excerpt:
“When the [cable television] collapse hits [Los Angeles], capital will rush out of the traditional entertainment industry faster than you can say ‘Lehman Brothers.’ And, as in New York, talented young people with industry awareness will be there to grab that capital and create new businesses. That’s when things will get interesting. Just as New York — against all odds — became the locus of traditional business being disrupted by technology, Los Angeles will erupt with creativity around the collision of technology and entertainment. New forms of content — programming that isn’t bound by 13 episodes that are 22 minutes long! — will appear overnight. The disruption will be challenging at first, but a Video Renaissance will emerge.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lwksu9cYaA1qzophoo1_500.jpg)
Agree 100% with this
I wrote this thing for Nieman Journalism Lab’s Predictions for Journalism 2012:
LA Is the Future (Kill Me Now)
Excerpt:
“When the [cable television] collapse hits [Los Angeles], capital will rush out of the traditional entertainment industry faster than you can say ‘Lehman Brothers.’ And, as in New York, talented young people with industry awareness will be there to grab that capital and create new businesses. That’s when things will get interesting. Just as New York — against all odds — became the locus of traditional business being disrupted by technology, Los Angeles will erupt with creativity around the collision of technology and entertainment. New forms of content — programming that isn’t bound by 13 episodes that are 22 minutes long! — will appear overnight. The disruption will be challenging at first, but a Video Renaissance will emerge.”
[video]
(Source: whereisthecoool)
Self reliance.
I Believe In The Internet - The Content Industry Doesn't -
The Internet is not just a series of pipes. It’s core architecture embeds an assumption about human nature. The Internet is designed to empower individuals not control them. It assumes that the if individuals are empowered, they will do the right thing the vast majority of the time.
(via courtenaybird)
“Sharing and recommendation shouldn’t be passive. It should be conscious, thoughtful, and amusing—we are tickled by a story, picture, or video and we choose to share it, and if a startling number of Internet users also find that thing amusing, we, together, consciously create a tidal wave of meme that elevates that piece of media to viral status. We choose these gems from the noise.” — How Facebook is ruining sharing | Molly Rants - CNET (via courtenaybird)
(via courtenaybird)
