Everyone's a Publisher

Chapter 3

Safko, The Social Media Bible

Safko covers the  history of publishing, from the 32,000-year-old cave paintings at Lascaux, France, to blogs and e-zines such as Zimbio. This chapter serves as a gateway for the chapters to follow, which will cover web pages, internet forums, blogs, wikis, sharing photos, audio and video, podcasting, and microblogging.

As I read Safko's review of the various technologies (the stylus, papyrus, moveable type, the printing press, the laser printer), I gained a new perspective on the current seismic shift away from paper media (newspapers and magazines). The longer view says that publishing on paper will undoubtedly join other technologies, such as marks on clay tablets, someday on museum display shelves. A great deal of anxiety swirls around the decline of paper  publishing, because a lot of people now make their living or fortunes in the business, and no business model has emerged yet for the digital medium or media that will take its place. The bottom line, though, is that paper will die someday.

There are similar issues for other mass media of the 20^th century, especially TV and radio. (The slide for network TV began a couple decades ago, when cable TV began eroding the networks' audience share.) Broadcasters are in the process of giving way to new communication technologies that may bear some similarities, but will be different.

The trend to self-publishing comes with its own set of issues. The first issue, for me, is filling the role of editor. If the publisher is generating content (or aggregating it from online sources), who will apply editorial judgment? In my opinion, the importance of this function is vastly underrated. Editors choose what topics will be covered; how they will be covered; and the form(s) in which they will be presented. Once the content is created, the editor makes sure it is accurate, clear, fair, and will not get the content creator/publisher in legal trouble. It’s a rare individual who has the energy and creativity to generate the content, and also the wisdom and judgment to edit it as it should be.

Good editors have always been undervalued, in my opinion. In a world where anyone is a publisher, they may be forgotten altogether. The losers, in many instances, will be the consumers of the information. A good summary of the reasons that businesses, especially, should pay attention to editing is in this article by a business communications consulant.