TheWayoftheWeb

Sad news today as Cnet has reported the body of missing Cnet Editor James Kim has been found, after he left his family and stranded car to get help in a remote stretch of Oregon wilderness.
The senior editor for digital audio was missing for 11 days and had covered around eight miles of extremely difficult terrain.

Sums it up…

There seems to be a common view that the days of the professional journalist are numbered, as publishers can rely on content created by their users to fill the pages of their magazines and websites, reducing costs.

I personally don’t believe this will be the case, and hopefully I can now explain why. It’s something that does personally affect me, being a professional editorial person, but that doesn’t mean I’m precious about my position.

Many staff writers will be replaced by user generated content. There will be a need for someone to provide editorial judgement over the quality of each submission, but there will be a reduced need for writers.

However, that ignores the fact that the users submitting content will increasingly expect to get paid. Thereby creating a new profession of freelance staff who have no ties to companies or subjects, but will be able to float around the internet as a migrant workforce.

Increasingly the top web sites will be required to increase wages for the most prominent users, to retain their submissions, and this will in effect replace a staff of paid writers with…. a staff of paid writers…

The only implications I can see are that the staff of a website will be far more disparate and spread throughout the world, and that there will be problems for journalistic training bodies in a few years. After all, why would you spend three years on a degree to move into the media, when you could be blogging from 16 for the same results. The only people who will be requiring training will be the sub-editors selecting quality levels and editing copy to meet a minimum standard of literacy.

The only shock I can see for most people will be the split between the value of a brand, and the value of individual writers. If individual submitters are perceived to have a value as high as a magazine brand, then there is nothing to stop them branching out within an hour of making that decision.

In fact, for the top nth percent, it could soon be a licence to print money. If you have built up an audience submiting articles to a major brand, you can quite easily go and blog elswhere, or spread you work around, and your audience will soon find you on a search engine. It will also be interesting to see how many users are willing to hand over their copyrights, as more and more people look at earning a wage from online submissions.

Although I think reports of Sony’s demise in the console war is overstating the case somewhat, the electronic giant is having some problems of late.
Aside from the exploding batteries trouble which has affected a significant proportion of the laptop industry, and the news that Gran Tourismo HD has become significantly less Gran’, now the ‘Father of the Playstation’ Ken Kutaragi has been promoted away from any control over the PS3…
It really does feel as if the Xbox 360 has attracted the hardcore, the Nintendo Wii has piqued the interest of those looking for something different, and there seems to be no end of reasons why the PS3 isn’t guaranteed to be worth the wait.

It’s particularly ironic as I’ve spent all weekend enjoying Singsatr on the PS2…it was the ‘gadget’ games which offered something new (dancemats, singstar, guitar hero, eyetoy), and now all of them have been appropriated by the Wii, and to some extent by the Xbox 360…