Is Content Worthless?
Jonathan Handel asks Is Content Worthless?
It’s true that people still consume media the old-fashioned way — but fewer and fewer do so every day. Most of the content industries are seeing flat or declining revenues and audiences. And these trends are particularly notable among younger people. As a result, the music industry is a shambles; the film and television businesses are running scared; and newspapers are disappearing or instituting cutbacks and layoffs. The handwriting is on the wall, or the laptop screen.
User generated content is often a poor substitute for professional content or traditional media. But that’s little comfort. Alternate goods don’t have to be perfect substitutes in order to acquire market share at the expense of the competition. And, yes, in some cases, new media make money for creators and companies – but the money’s much less than it used to be. As NBC Universal’s Jeff Zucker lamented, the content industries are being forced to “trade today’s analog dollars for digital pennies.”
I tried to parse all of this discussion into a more cohesive discussion of content in higher education materials and wonder whether the operative question — whether content is truly worthless — rings more true in the ivory tower than anywhere else? If you’ve sat in any meetings or watch what people do, the mentality that forces marketing and PR people to “keep up with the Joneses” is in overdrive. Everybody wants to get the same leg up the wanted before, but the ways to communicate your “message” are more varied than ever before.
The mishmash of social networking sites, web 2.0 “innovations” and the regular buffet of printed materials are leaving institutions in a whirlwind, as they try to figure out how to capture their audience in a world where they can get whatever information they want, given they are prepared to search for it.
I tend to roll my eyes at institutions who consistently seek the “wisdom” of PR firms to help them understand who they are. Especially otherwise self-aware institutions. I have no problem with seeking out a fresh set of eyes. I think that’s a wise decision for those that can afford to do that. But rather than client communicating what’s important to them and using the ‘fresh set of eyes’ to capture their audience, their seems to be a increasing dependence on the “wisdom” of outsiders to shape and mold what an institution is about.
I’m sorry, but if your several hundred old institution doesn’t have enough institutional vision coming from anywhere within its walls to warrant developing a campaign that speaks to what you do, how you do it well and what you’ll do for the students you’re wooing so hard (other than give them boatloads of debt), then perhaps your school needs to 1) shut down or 2) close for a week and reevaluate what the hell it is you’re doing.
The point here is simple. You have to know yourself before someone else can come in and tell you what you ought to be doing or how to accentuate that. If content is worthless, sincerity is underrated. I think that if people were more focused on simple themes, cohesive thoughts and clear ideas, that the answers they seek would bubble up in a more natural way. As a result, your content and the materials you produce will speak with an authority about your institution that will leave even your competitors saying “we need to do that for ourselves.”
Content isn’t worthless, the way we use it renders it so.
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04/11/2008
One response to Is Content Worthless?
I will address this at somepoint at TFTDS, but what most bigwigs don’t get, yet some do is that people don’t have to accept shitty content anymore. Remember the 80s when for a solid four months there was nothing but shitty reruns on TV? And most movies were godawful and the good ones took forever to get to video?
In an age of declining “analog” Hanna Montana still sells out concerts, Harry Potter books make millionaires, and fantastic movies make profits.
It’s not the medium that is the threat, it’s the mediocrity. Why subcribe to a newspaper that is 80% newswire stories, syndicated columnists, and ads when all of those are online?
The music industry can still sell CDs, they just can’t sell bad ones (or ones with only two good songs) any more… same for the rest.