Content! Read all about it!

As we continue as a company to close in on target models for information content gathering and packaged product delivery, one thing is very clear. We still have some distance to cover before a clear path is laid for gathering or packaging content. I don’t expect and don’t need anyone to concur with that statement…I’ve seen and heard enough to know it needs to be said. Steve Butty has just recently laid out an outstanding explanation of the changes taking place in his organization. It is a great read and of interest to employees, customers and others in the industry. Steve hits a key element in his post:

For all of those 126 years, our success has been tied to a packaged product, a newspaper. Even though our customers like that packaged product and many even love it, they aren’t buying it because of the package but because of the content: stories, photographs, columns, graphics, editorials, obituaries, calendars, box scores, lists of information, advertisements.

Watch and see this information content transformation take place in front of your eyes. Even at the electronic delivery end of the spectrum, there are changes and some undiscovered territory (some of which we are just blazing through alone because no other news organization has ever attempted it). We might be creating industry best practices, we might be slightly off the mark. One thing is for certain, it is not just corporate leadership that is wrestling with the changes and not just a few who are championing the “content” focus. Tom Altman provides a good case in point. Tom, one of my web developers, is spot on when talking a technical point, but notice how quickly he draws things back to the fundamental killer-trait when it comes to information:

This is very cool and it is letting the WebDev geeks get some kung-fu going, but that is not the part that has me worried.
It’s the content that worries me.

I can imagine a few raised eyebrows right, amazed slightly that those technical dweebs are yakking about content, it’s accessibility, it’s usability, etc. That’s okay…we aren’t your Dad’s newspaper IT group, so I can understand.

What is so tremendously exciting about this transformation is the disparity between where we are headed and where most people have grown used to news organizations being centered. Here’s the old way: staff journalists gather the news, the staff packages it and carriers delivery it. Here’s the new way: content comes from every available source (staff and public), it is aggregated publicly and open for real-time discussion and some of that makes it way into packaged products. Think about that for a second. Does that mean that you could actually WATCH as the applicable content is gathered, linked and semantically woven into the fabric of an actual story. Yep. Read all about it!