He said "content," heh-heh, heh-heh

Ahh, synchronicty. The last two posts have been about media-centric dinosaurs facing internal revolt, mass revulsion and, most likely, their turn to be pounded by mean old punctuated equilibrium.

But in the post just down from this, about the AMA's typical "destroy the village to save it" fascination with some newfangled gizmo called Blogging, I think I used a naughty word.

Content.

Well, at least Doc Searlsthinks it's gauche. Or something...

Bonus Link: Jay Rosen's Top Ten Ideas of '04: "Content Will be More Important than its Container". My own corollary: Worst metaphor in the history of journalism: that writing is "content". Let's call writing writing. Or "editorial". Or "speech". Or "essay". Or "prose". Or whatever. If it helps, remember this: Content can be regulated as container cargo in the shipping system we call commerce. Meanwhile, Writing is protected as speech by the First Amendment. Yes, I know there are exceptions. But the distinction is real, and important.

Okay, Doc has a point, but Rosen's is more acute, more, uh, pressing:

6. "Content will be more important than its container." Most writers, journalists and critics I know hate the word content. (See this guy, for example, who refuses to say "content.") They hate it because it's a leveler: if we say that a news report, a comic strip, a scientific study, and a blog rant are all "content," then aren't we saying they're kind of equivalent? That's an outrage to a writer, a journalist, a critic, so the word content must be an outrage too, they think.

But content is an analytic term. It refers to the "stuff" media carry rather than the carriage system itself. We need a term like that. It's not a leveler; it's just neutral. I think what smart people mean when they "hate" the word content is they hate thinking about things in that way. We should talk about literature-- not content.

It was another important thing said by Tom Curley, CEO of the Associated Press, in his big speech this year to the Online News Association: "Content will be more important than its container" in the next phase of Web development. "That's a big shift for old media to come to grips with," Curley added. "Killer apps, such as search, RSS and video-capture software such as Tivo -- to name just a few -- have begun to unlock content from any vessel we try to put it in."

The means are there to unlock content from any vessel we try to put it in. Those vessels are the big media brands themselves, including the flagships of the press fleet. Here's Admiral Curley telling them that news is becoming unhinged from "brand," and so we who make news content have to re-locate where we brand it, and think about adding our voice at every step.

What Curley was saying ran parallel to what ex-newspaper man Tim Porter said in 2003: "The real lesson both the newsroom and the boardroom need to learn is that, in the age of the 24-hour scroll, the micro-fragmentation of electronic media, and the constant clamor for a news consumer's attention by everyone from the New York Times to yours truly, all that's left is the journalism."

And if the journalism isn't good enough, you're in trouble. "Quality sells," Porter wrote. "But, then again, in the monopolies most newspapers have enjoyed for decades mediocre has sold almost as well." (More Porter: Indistinct Equals Extinct.) Curley again: "The franchise is not the newspaper; it's not the broadcast; it's not even the Web site. The franchise is the content itself."

He said it again. Content! Brand, too! Hehe-hehe.

Seriously though, shouldn't we be far more offended by all these Emperors running around with nary a stitch on, Doc? Yep. Cuz that's a "worst metaphor," and a truth, that offends all kinds of sensibilities and possibilities. Content-wise, I mean.

Heh-heh.