Content: king or not?
July 14, 2007 by Gary Schlee
It was a headline designed to grab attention: Content is not King, an article by Alice Marshall on Bulldog Reporter. But in the author’s view, ‘King’ really means ‘economic supremacy’.
“It was said that those who created compelling content would be the winners in the Internet economy … Yet the people who made money from the dot-com boom were the manufacturers of router and network equipment, web servers and infrastructure related products and services. Those who built the Internet itself did well. The content creators took a bath.”
Personally, the royal reference means ‘important’ to me — and there’s nothing in the article to suggest that content does not remain the most important part of the communication exercise. Newsroom staffs may be getting smaller while the growth in web writers is exploding.Does a shifting balance from professional writers to anyone-can-be writers create some cause for concern? You bet. Will that affect the way PR folks get their messages out? You bet. Tactics will need to change — as they always do.
But that shouldn’t affect compelling content.
2 Responses to “Content: king or not?”
Why do so few PR programs have research courses?…
This measurement PRoponent / PRomulgator got to chatting with a number of recent (and soon-to-be) Canadian…
Spammed by Hill & Knowlton! Is this one of the new tactics for spreading content you mention at the close of this post, Gary?
I thoroughly agree with you, though – you can’t measure these things in purely economic terms. Different industries have different monetary scales and, short of putting out the next Harry Potter novel, writing of any kind is rarely lucrative. I have a friend who works in finance – he does nothing and makes twice what I do. It’s worth it, however, because I am a civilized, well-spoken human being, and he is a usurious ape. I am king.
We are king. And legion.
The providers and stage-setters have always made the majority of the money regardless of the industry, anyhow. Basketball team owners don’t play basketball – oil tycoons don’t work on rigs. That only makes them kings in the old sense of monarchy – a dei gratia sort of situation.
And we know what happened to them.