Publishing 2.0

What's publishing, or journalism, when the reader is also the writer, publisher, editor and marketer. Publishing 2.0? It’s very confused… that’s for sure. When I was at college, I was taught that there were basically two directions to any communication. First the sender creates a message, and passes it to the receiver, and then the receiver becomes the sender and a new message goes back, often acknowledging receipt and comprehension of the first message. However, for mass media, those with the power are those who can disseminate messages to large numbers of people, who are not able, or permitted, to publish for themselves, either to the population, or the media provider. The history of human social communication, as far back as you can go, can be seen massive imbalance on the first one-directional message: - from the powerful media owner, the owner of the pyramid, or printing press, and recently, the traditional medium; tv, radio, newspapers - to the people, the audience, the readership. There's been little if any communication back. Well, that’s over. The imbalance is rapidly being redressed online, in a remarkably civilized anarchy.

It's what I'm calling Publishing 2.0; a logical enough name for online Web 2.0 blogging, writing, publishing etc. It is blogs, Wikis, Usenet, bulletin boards, torrents and all the rest. And that’s just in the publishing direction. Links, search engine submissions and spidering, tags n diggs, anchor text, references and quotes... That’s both the marketing and advertising, and the ‘audience-to –publication’ direction. This − ‘letting the audience speak back’, is a long way from ‘letters to the editor’. It's user generated buzz marketing. In fact, for many, this has become the whole point. You can speak to the publisher, and in doing so have your comments published, in real time, and then maybe start your own blog, linking the original publisher of the first blog, and so it continues. The blogs can be about anything, and everything. A colleague recently told me about ‘arseblog’: the blog of an arsenal fan. It is one of the most popular blogs in the UK at present. It has an impressive readership, and no doubt, an equally impressive earning from advertising on-site. Publishing 2.0 can be diverse. There can be publications with a tech nature, communicative actions spaces − calling people to make a change in government or in the world, or just vanity blogs, with pics of me and my cat who happens to look like Hitler.

The old media concepts need an upgrade, or a least a few qualifying patches. I can still hear a voice at the back whispering ‘sure that’s only online stuff. That only affects Internet users’. Well, you're right at the back, except for the tone of voice, and the word 'only'. Online news would be simple to pigeon-hole and put aside, if it weren't for the fact that it is so popular and pervasive. Online, to me, infers a connected, dynamic, multi-platform, efficiently marketable, infinetly archiveable and searchable (and findable) space. So yes..., it is online. That’s the point. That’s why you should take notice. It’s not on a CD, or Disk, or in some Library’s Opac system. It’s online. It’s free, it’s cool, it’s excellently efficient, and its here to stay.

It’s also so much more fun than the way it used to be. And, it was not in a good place. I will never forget the news of the 80s and 90s… looking at the excellent but skinny bearded face of Michael Murphy in a brown suit on RTE, who every night, so incredibly carefully mouthed and munched the words ‘And this is the news’, (my heart would sink) followed after what seemed like an immeasurably long time filled with information delivered with the same tone of importance, (a record breaking Super-Lobster and then the Falklands War), followed by ‘agus anois an Nuacht,’ and he was off again in Irish…. I despaired. And then this was followed by the news for the deaf where the words went up the screen at the wrong speed, and Maurice had to slow up noticeably while, at the same time, the sign language lady looked more and more desperate, waving frantically to catch up! (That was the best bit.) And then it was time for bed. My final hours of telly ruined by crap news programming. It was so stilted, and boring and bad, it put many of us off any news for many years. I know I was too young, but I remember thinking this was the only news, the only source of information and truth, and you got the impression that if wasn’t on the news, it hadn’t happened at all or was totally unimportant. Also, that the only news worth knowing happened in Ireland, maybe the UK and America, occassionally France or Europe, and not many other places. Maybe they were too poor to have news, or tellies, or both!

What is happening now is so much more fun and so much better. Populations are actually engaged in a new wave of information sharing, gathering and communication. It’s all very democratic, as we’re all enfranchised to have our say, to consume what news and content we like, and to filter out the irrelevant, boring and un-interesting. I really feel we all have some catching up to do, in our attitude, and our skills, if we’re to keep pace, because all media are going online in a way. All content already is, or will become digital and leave a digital path. The traditional media try to keep pace, and some, like the Guardian and the BBC have great success, and lead the way. Our own RTE is doing very well lately, and has big plans that aren’t far behind the big publishers, from bigger, richer countries with bigger budgets and populations. But these Irish publishing entities remain traditional in structure, administration and attitude..... with all the good stuff; like scale, quality, integrity and accuracy; and all the bad stuff, like gate keeping and agenda setting, government control, conservativeness and with just an inability to keep up with the ever accelerating pace of communication and social change. Often, they’re just too big.

But there is even a further leveller between the big and small publishers online, and its a big one. Is the content read? Online, you can quickly tell it has been read, by the number and quality of the comments, by links, references, and many other measures of buzz. You can also track what advertising has been viewed, clicked on, and what clickers did afterwards. Offline, well, its nothing like that. With TV, there's on-going measurement from the TAM ratings panel, which is effective, but you can't click on TV; not yet anyway. For papers, and press news... Well, its not possible to gather even these measures. You can report the print run per publication, but not the readers per publication. With big publications, advertisers know quickly enough that the advertising is working, that they are getting a return on their investment, (they should do anyway). But, for small offline publications, often business to business or industry publications, its even worse. These will have smaller numbers printed, and fewer readers. These publications are accepted as containers for infomercials and corporate pieces ('Ronseal now does even more than exactly what it says on the tin!). Online, you can have independent measures of the readership of each business to business article, not merely the issue or title. You can independently track exactly how popular and effective that specific article has been. You wouldn't do it most of the time, but you could, - if there was a business case behind it. There are independent mechanics for believing the popularity stats of the publisher. We encounter this all the time at NB, and we hone advertising plans and executions based on the effectiveness of each site, each site page, and each format over time. This stuff is well worth thinking about too, if you are a journalist or editor. Sometime around the corner, the value of all writings will be measured in this way. 'Value', I said, not 'quality'. This will be a brutal space, where excellent quality writing may not be as popular as poorly constructed populist trash. If the story doesn't burn the impressions, the editor will pay less. I think, in the end of the day, the cream will float to the top, and that the readership is more sophisticated than some gutter press have given them credit for, but that's not my business really. I'm not a publisher. Measurement by stories read will happen though. As an online audience researcher, and advertiser, that is my business.

So how do NB see ourselves in this new space? Well, our job is to observe, reflect, describe and then engage consumers with ad messages on behalf our advertisers and their agencies. We need to engage Irish eyeballs wherever they may be (dance, dance) with a view on the quality of the content, its popularity and the community and loyalty that surrounds these messages. As interactive media changes everything, we aim to understand these changes, and change with them. The Internet is an experiential medium, so we have to be part of it, if we’re to fully comprehend what’s happening. Naturally, we’re partisan, in that we’re interested in Irish content on Irish sites, but also democratic, in that, it won’t be just the big sites, or government driven content we’ll recommend. Well, actually, we will of course do exactly that most of the time, i.e., recommend advertising on bigger, better sites; sites that produce multi-media content typically of a higher quality, but we’ll also watch closely what’s happening with the little guys… and recommend these when its good, and when it works.

So, there are some thoughts on publishing. These thoughts aren’t meant to upset anyone, but I do hope they stimulate some sort of debate, or reflection, and that they are informative to some degree to the digitally in-initiated. If not? Grand. Enjoy the next blog.