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Demand Media is evil. Or so Folio: magazine general manager Tony Silber implied yesterday in a blog post entitled “Demand Media Can Go to Hell.”
Silber’s beef with the so-called content farm is like that of many others from traditional publishing: to pay freelance writers a paltry 3 cents a word, on average, is to “demean and abuse professional content creators.”
Word that the company is looking to partner with magazine publishers was apparently enough to push Silber over the edge:
 Tony Silber: Damned Media “I hope no magazine ever partners with Demand Media. In fact, I hope Demand Media and any site like it goes out of business. They demean and abuse professional content creators, leveraging them to generate revenue from Google ads.
They’re sweatshops. No magazine should accept content from a company that treats content with such disrespect. In the end, too, you get what you pay for.”
I sympathize with Silber’s outrage and admire the frank way he expressed it. But is he right to demonize Demand?
Continue reading Damnation and Creation: Is Demand Media Devaluing Content?
 Of all the publishing-industry reactions to the debut of Apple’s iPad so far, the strangest may be a suggestion that the iPad and other e-readers will allow magazines to give up the Web. In a brief blog post on Folio: today, Donald Seckler proposes that as e-readers soar in popularity, they will offer an attractive alternative to the Web. Rather than give away content free on your Web site, he says, offer it only on e-readers. And of course, charge a bundle for it. Print-publishing saved, case closed.
Seckler’s post appears to arise from a traditionalist print-publisher view of the Internet as a refuge for thieves and brigands, who “easily grab and reuse your content.” So the obvious solution is to “take away the free content” on the Web and make sure that “there is only one place for people to turn for your brand’s expert content.”
Seckler doesn’t share his views without trepidation. “I know that sounds a little crazy,” he says. “OK, a lot crazy.”
No, Donald, not crazy. Just dumb. A lot dumb.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, let’s quickly review a few key precepts of the new-media reality:
Continue reading Apple’s iPad May Help Save Publishing, But Not This Way
As journalists continue to witness the decline of traditional job opportunities, more of them are looking closely at content marketing. Consulting journalist Paul Conley has argued for several years now that content marketing represents one of the most promising career choices for journalists. Similarly, but from a marketer’s perspective, David Meerman Scott has told journalists that they have “an amazing career opportunity on the dark side” (which he calls brand journalism rather than content marketing).
 David Meerman Scott Scott’s “dark side” reference rightly implies that journalists won’t take this step without trepidation. The rules for writers and editors in traditional journalism are clear; not so in content marketing. Journalists entering this uncharted territory must improvise their own code of ethics. But can writers alone ensure an ethical product without a similar commitment from their sponsors?
The recent experience of BusinessWeek writers laid off last month illustrates the kind of soul-searching that working directly for sponsors can provoke. Former BW tech columnist Steve Wildstrom wrote on January 4 that he had accepted a gig writing for chip manufacturer Nvidia. While such “direct sponsorship” went against his instincts as a longtime journalist, he recognized that “we are going to have to find new models to survive.” Prominent among those new models is content marketing (though neither he nor his colleagues discussed here use that term).
Continue reading Ethics and Content Marketing: Ex-BW Writers Weigh In
In the content business, talking down to your audience isn’t as easy as it used to be. When the means of production and distribution were out of reach to most, journalists and marketers were in control of the conversation. But in the new-media world, as Jeff Jarvis and others have shown, it’s the audience, not the publisher, who’s in control. Talk to your audience as equals and they may listen. Treat them like children and they won’t.
No one ever argued that patronizing your readers was a good idea. But when you control the conversation, it’s too easy to slip unthinkingly into the habit. While the new-media revolution may have shifted control away from content producers, the habit persists in some surprising places.
You can see evidence of it even in such new-media leaders as Copyblogger. In her otherwise useful and readable columns, Copyblogger writer Sonia Simone every so often reveals a bit of this old-media habit.
In one of her Content Marketing 101 entries, “The Three Essentials of Breakthrough Content Marketing,” she asks how best to train a puppy. Her answer is to “give him a cookie and a nice pat on the head every time he does what you want.” She recommends a similar strategy for content marketing:
“Your content needs to work the same way. High-quality content trains your readers and listeners to keep opening your stuff. It rewards them for doing what you want them to do. That means that every piece of content you write has to either solve a problem your audience cares about or it has to entertain them. Preferably both. Everything they receive from you should make them feel good. Each piece of content is a cookie that rewards your audience for consuming it.”
In another Copyblogger column published last week, “Does Your Customer Want What You’ve Got to Offer?” she upgrades her audience metaphorically from canines to children: “Too often, we get caught up in how much our prospect should want what we’re feeding them. And then we get surprised when they respond like a toddler faced with a bowl full of broccoli ice cream.”
In both cases, the advice is good. But the analogies are dangerous. If we treat our audience as our peers, they’ll let us remain in the conversation. If not, they’ll go elsewhere.
I am a firm believer in a strong code of editorial ethics, as many editors who’ve worked with me would be all too quick to affirm. But I also believe that to be successful, a code of ethics must be flexible, adapting organically to the norms and expectations of different media and communities. Recent evidence from the New York Times only underscores for me the problems with rigidity in editorial ethics.
Several months ago I wrote about how a strict code of editorial ethics like that of the Times might have a dark side as a competitive weapon. The idea, suggested by tech journalist John Dvorak, involved the paper’s editorial policy forbidding reporters from accepting any reimbursement for travel expenses from outside sources. To Dvorak, who doesn’t believe paid press junkets are necessarily evil, the Times’ motivation is not strictly ethical.
The darker motive, he argued, was to set a standard that disadvantaged smaller competitors. While the Times could afford to pay the travel costs of its writers, smaller papers could not. Feeling obliged to match the high ethical standard set by the Times, those papers would simply relinquish coverage of costly events to the Times.
This week, a new twist on this theme emerged from a recent uproar over how the Times applies its code to freelancers. Now, it seems, even the Times can’t afford its ethics policy. Its solution? Freelancers.
Continue reading Editorial Ethics, Yes; Rigidity, No
Any Internet search for advice on “writing for the Web” will produce thousands of advisories. All of them are useful, but to judge from my recently concluded study of 50 B2B Web sites, their advice is widely ignored by e-news writers and editors
How does the news writing on your B2B site measure up? Using a simple “fix-it alert” scoring system can help you answer that question.
For the study, I analyzed 446 articles on the basis of eight factors I’ve found to be essential to effective e-news writing:
- Impact. How important is the subject of the article to target readers? Is it of urgent interest, or is it just filler?
- Enterprise. How much digging does the story represent? Is the article just a warmed-over press release, or did the writer seek out fresh information?
- Direct quotes. Does the article include original, direct quotes from key news sources?
- Fast-paced lead. How many words does it take to get to the key point of the story? Better leads get there in fewer words.
- Readability. To assess this factor, I recommend the Fog Index. A Fog Index grade level is derived via a calculation involving average sentence length and words of three or more syllables. To ensure readability, the Fog Index grade level should not exceed 12.
- Average sentence length. Although average sentence length is a component of the Fog Index, I’ve isolated it here because so many e-news writers thrive on endless sentences.
- Article word count. In general, successful e-news stories are short, though the ideal length will vary from one Web site to another. My study is based on a preferred maximum length of 750 words.
- Embedded links. Hyperlinks are what the Internet is all about. If your writer doesn’t work at least one link into the text of the story, it’s not a true e-news article.
These factors are fairly obvious and should not be subject to argument. But for some reason, these editorial basics—particularly readability and average sentence length—seem to be a foreign language for the low-scoring sites I reviewed.
Continue reading The Fix-It Alert: Eight Keys to Better Online News Writing
 Though for me there is little schadenfreude in witnessing the decline and fall of newspapers, I do find one small cause for cheer in this otherwise unsettling spectacle: the potential resurgence of the serial comma.
The serial comma is that final one in a series of three or more items, as in the phrase “red, white, and blue.” (It is sometimes known by its detractors as the “Oxford” or “Harvard” comma, as if to imply that a preference for clarity is somehow elitist or purely academic.)
Most newspapers and their style guides have steadfastly resisted the serial comma. They prefer instead “red, white and blue.”
It’s often suggested that this resistance arose from a desire for typesetting efficiency, as New York Times editor Philip B. Corbett has said:
“I suspect that journalists’ aversion to the additional comma arose in the old days when setting type was laborious and expensive. If you already have an “and,” why bother with a comma, too? The practice persists, from habit and perhaps from the sense that fewer commas make prose seem more direct and rapid—qualities we journalists prize in our writing.”
As Corbett indicates, the argument against the serial comma boils down to this: You don’t need it, and it sounds fussy and ponderous.
Although I find that the serial comma sounds more natural, I can buy the argument that it often isn’t necessary for clarity. But even opponents of serialism recognize that, at times, the additional comma is essential.
And therein lies the problem. Many writers will fail to recognize those times, and clarity will suffer. Although the use of a serial comma can lead to ambiguity too, as Wikipedia evenhandedly points out, I’ve found that ambiguities are more likely in its absence. So for me, consistent use of serial commas is the wiser policy. (For a longer and more convincing version of this argument, may I suggest the Grammar Girl?)
Opposition to the serial comma will not die out any time soon. Many newspaper writers and editor will hold on to their old habits, even as they exchange new media and venues for old. But the decline of newspapers as an institutional influence on writing gives me hope that the serial comma will make slow but steady gains in the new-media world.
The recent surge of so-called content farms has inspired a torrent of commentary from new-media pundits, most of it disapproving. Content farms (also called content factories) are web sites that produce huge numbers of short articles based on keywords popular in search engines. The leading examples are Demand Media, Associated Content, Answers.com, and, most recently, AOL. Some of these sites rely on free user-generated content; others, like Demand Media, pay small sums to content contributors.
Objections to the content farms fall generally into one or more of three categories:
- They are bad for writers
- They are bad for readers
- They are bad for the Internet
It’s not surprising that people who write for a living would be troubled by the pay rates of content farms. Folio:’s Jason Fell, for instance, noting that he used to get $100 for 300-word reviews, is appalled at the $15 per article averaged by Demand Media writers. He concludes that “online content and its creators have been devalued.” Similarly, Wired’s Daniel Roth sees Demand writers as “the online equivalent of day laborers waiting in front of Home Depot.” How, he asks of the pay, “can anyone survive on that?”
Continue reading Five Reasons Not To Fear Content Farms
 Ihnatko: Apple tablet will spark digital publishing revolution Of all the predictions for 2010 I’ve read—or hope to read (Paul Conley, how about B2B predictions as lullaby lyrics?)—the one that has me most excited is that Apple will come out with a tablet computer. This isn’t just because I’m a serious technophile, but also because an Apple tablet will have the potential to remake magazine publishing.Until earlier this week, I entertained only idle thoughts about Apple’s rumored tablet in development, mostly when experiencing one frustration or another with my Kindle. But after hearing tech journalist Andy Ihnatko talk about the tablet on the Macbreak Weekly podcast yesterday, I’m persuaded not only that the “iPad” is real, but also that it will be revolutionary.
Ihnatko was responding to news reports that an Oppenheimer analyst expects a March or April launch of the tablet and that it will squarely target the Kindle.
While Ihnatko doubted that Apple’s tablet would “own the e-book marketplace,” he did agree that the device would transform it. “The amount of excitement that it’s going to generate just for e-publishing in general is already phenomenal.” As he noted in his Chicago Sun-Times article last week on a rival tablet computer, the erstwhile “CrunchPad,” computer makers are all preparing for “what happens after Apple releases the Tablet.” He compared their state of mind to that in a year before a world war: “No, it hasn’t been announced, it hasn’t been scheduled, but everybody’s anticipating that the world will be fundamentally different this time next year. They are making arrangements to make sure they are in the best position to survive and thrive in that new landscape.”
Continue reading Prediction: Apple’s Tablet Will Change Publishing
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