December 12, 2005
the half-life of a blog comment etc.
Back in 2003 I left a comment over at Jeff Jarvis’s blog. Today Jeff quoted it in The Guardian:
American editors and publishers came to define themselves less by their role in the community and more by their medium, as proprietors of presses, owners of content, controllers of distribution. But my friend and fellow blogger Hugh MacLeod advises instead that “newspapers should stop seeing themselves as things, rather a point on the map where wonderful people cluster together to do wonderful things.” Exactly.
I don’t know — or care — whether you are reading these words now on paper or online. I know only that you are reading the Guardian because you have a relationship with it as a living beast you either like or like to argue with. The medium would not matter a bit if only advertisers were wise enough to value readers equally across any medium. Until advertisers learn, publishers will be saddled with the high cost of having to produce paper. But the wise publishers, the ones I came across in Europe, are eager for what follows and are just figuring out how to get there.
I suppose this has all to do with “The Kinetic Quality”, an idea that I was infatuated with back in my advertising days.
[ALSO: You can read the entire article here, without registration.]
[BONUS LINK:] I love this quote:
Yep. That’s why I don’t worry much about competition. Let them come. Just keeping up should wear out the posers before lunch. Anyone left standing after dinner is no longer competition — they’re colleagues.
Hmm, it sounds like on the one hand he thinks all media are more or less equal (a reader is a reader is…) but on the other hand it sounds like he thinks dead-tree publishing is Bad.
The “high cost of having to produce paper” (or print on it anyway) is not something you’re “saddled with” — unless you have a product that’s actually more effective in a pure-online form.
In many cases that cost is simply what you pay to have the pysical presence your readers want (as demonstrated by their willingness to pay for it). Not all publishing is best in its cheapest possible form.
Here’s a thought: should advertising rates have something to do with production values? Should I pay more for a pair of eyes in GQ because it costs more to produce than GapingVoid does, or should I pay the same for the eyes?
GQ has some big advantages: the eyes paid to be there (and thus are more likely to linger), and the ads (if done well) are things to browse in themselves. That part would be nice to see online, especially in blogville: ads that are worthy of browsing on their own merits.
Afterthought:
“ads that are worthy of browsing on their own merits”
…isn’t that exactly what EnglishCut is?
The Microsoft Unlimted Potential (UP) Community Conference and Me
I was invited to attend and speak at the Unlimited Potential Community Conference.
This event allows…
my question is, what is the appropriate size cluster to achieve “wonderful”? Is it the readership of The Guardian? The people in my city or town? My neighborhood?