by: Yann Gourvennec
As a matter of fact, it enables us to connect all the dots and understand why the overall picture is changing, and not just business or journalism in isolation. Let’s face the music, this is a whole paradigm shift, one which was announced years ago (by Don Tapscott actually, who co-authored Wikinomics last year) and is now happening on a large scale. So, what have we learnt?
On the one hand there is “the changing face of journalism”, to put it in the words of Meranus is now a fact and no longer a threat. Numerous layoffs, restructuring, new business models, advertising revenues going away.
Secondly, as journalists are more and more into temping and less and less into full time journalism, at the same time, amateurs, experts, opinion leaders now have the means of expressing themselves directly. No technical barrier.
Thirdly, UGC as a means of direct communication vs top-down communication. Advertising was teaching lessons, UGC is about showing the way. Not just a new way of writing then, but a whole new Pinko attitude related to client interaction.
Fourthly, the way that people use information is different. before, they sat down and information was sorted out and filtered out for them by papers. Now, Internet enables on demand information requests. Rss enables push.
Fifthly, Corporate managers establish that new methods are required. Golden age of Taylorism and productivity nonsense is over. One has to respect the individual, mainly at times when resources are scarce. Changing demographics are responsible for this, don’t believe that suddenly HR becomes more clever, it’s a market issue.
All this doesn’t – forcibly – mean that papers will disappear. Hopefully they won’t. The format is convenient, and you don’t have to reboot it either But it is also costly and environmentally unfriendly (paper is a great source of pollution, if not the greatest, Wikipedia has a story on this). E-paper (in the broad sense of the term, not just the tablet gizmos) might replace journalism as we know it eventually, but there will always be a space for the press which expresses ideas and opinions and provides analyses, mainly political ones. There might be fewer and fewer people who want/can read them, but it doesn’t mean that they are the least important of readers.
All these reasons explain why UGC (User-generated content) is so important to the modern enterprise. Yet, I don’t think we should confuse users for journalists (they have other fish to fry) or vice versa (I see Corporate blogs being facilitated by journalists here and there, I’m not sure this is the right way to go).
Lastly, I believe that certain publications will go. May be not the HBR for it is well established, but lesser known management publications and expert/niche content will be pushed out of paper onto the Internet. I believed that would happen 15 years ago, and this is taking place now.
- read the article in full at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/marketing/publicrelations/prcolumnist/article193820.html
