Sunday, April 09, 2006
ARE YOU SITTING CONTENTEDLY?
And so to one of those navel-gazing conferences that is going to tell us all where the media is heading.
I signed up to understand the ‘commercial impact of blogging’ and learned all about ‘platform promiscuous consumers’. I found out how ‘mobile technologies are changing social relations’ and hoped to find ‘new ways to connect with consumers in a collaborative world’.
Okay, so it’s not difficult to poke fun at these media mumbojumbo sessions. But I did have something reinforced that I learned long ago.
Chris Dobson, general manager for sales and trade marketing at MSN International, told the throng that Microsoft has decided that “everyone is in the content business”. Although he was quick to dismiss print as an industry in decline (well, he would, wouldn’t he) he acknowledged that the good news is that content is “very important”.
And speaker after speaker from all shades of media opinion came to the same conclusion: without quality content the platform or means of delivery is immaterial.
Tamar Kasriel, head of knowledge venturing for Henley Centre Headlight Vision, shone her futurologist’s torch into the uncertain future to examine the love-hate relationship between information and time. Again, we end up at quality content delivered when it’s wanted.
I’m from the last generation of journalists who worked in ‘hot metal’. I marvelled at those clanking, smelly machines that turned my scribbles to fresh newsprint in a matter of minutes. But as Tom, the caseroom overseer, never tired of telling me when the copy was late: “Hurry up, lad, there’s fish and chips in that tonight.”
Now I have a blog and an iPod, but I’ve never forgotten the lessons of timeliness and quality content. Without both I was sunk then and I’d be sunk now.
Alan Geere
'Writing for the Reader' is the content-focussed course from the Journalism Training Centre. Enrol now (er, that's enough media mumbojumbo, Ed.)
And so to one of those navel-gazing conferences that is going to tell us all where the media is heading.
I signed up to understand the ‘commercial impact of blogging’ and learned all about ‘platform promiscuous consumers’. I found out how ‘mobile technologies are changing social relations’ and hoped to find ‘new ways to connect with consumers in a collaborative world’.
Okay, so it’s not difficult to poke fun at these media mumbojumbo sessions. But I did have something reinforced that I learned long ago.
Chris Dobson, general manager for sales and trade marketing at MSN International, told the throng that Microsoft has decided that “everyone is in the content business”. Although he was quick to dismiss print as an industry in decline (well, he would, wouldn’t he) he acknowledged that the good news is that content is “very important”.
And speaker after speaker from all shades of media opinion came to the same conclusion: without quality content the platform or means of delivery is immaterial.
Tamar Kasriel, head of knowledge venturing for Henley Centre Headlight Vision, shone her futurologist’s torch into the uncertain future to examine the love-hate relationship between information and time. Again, we end up at quality content delivered when it’s wanted.
I’m from the last generation of journalists who worked in ‘hot metal’. I marvelled at those clanking, smelly machines that turned my scribbles to fresh newsprint in a matter of minutes. But as Tom, the caseroom overseer, never tired of telling me when the copy was late: “Hurry up, lad, there’s fish and chips in that tonight.”
Now I have a blog and an iPod, but I’ve never forgotten the lessons of timeliness and quality content. Without both I was sunk then and I’d be sunk now.
Alan Geere
'Writing for the Reader' is the content-focussed course from the Journalism Training Centre. Enrol now (er, that's enough media mumbojumbo, Ed.)
# posted by Writes & Wrongs @ 7:34 PM 
