New publishing models

[LECTURE FOR GLOBALISED COMMUNICATION AND CULTURE #GLOCO14 ]

It seems appropriate to talk about new and emergent publishing models on one of the most interesting of the current set, namely Medium itself. In this article I’ll cover the significant changes that I see occurring in publishing, how they relate to our project — co-creative knowledge network making — and where we can position ourselves within this liquid biome.

1980

I come from a background in experimental publishing, at a time when the only way to really be able to experiment with print and publishing ideas was to own the highest level of technology we could afford. To do this a group of people and I set up two small enterprises, Backyard Press and Champion Books, which acted as a symbiotic pair to support and enhance each other. Backyard Press was the commercial side, printing promotional material for Melbourne’s burgeoning independent scene. Champion Books was the experimenter. We had a broad definition of publishing, from metal-cased teledex-like poetry ‘books’ by Ted Hopkins, Teledex (see below); to photomontage books by Peter Lyssiotis, such as Journey of a Wise Electron, printed in the then expensive duotone method on art paper; to a book of random visual notions like Business As Usual (see below).

Teledex, Ted Hopkins, Champion Books

Business As Usual, Paul Greene, Champion Books

Backyard Press could afford the machinery (Heidelberg KORS 20" x 30" press, and 60" x 40" screen-printing tables, for those interested) and through the print work that we farmed out to local printers and finishing services, made the necessary connections into the printing industry.

Since then I have kept an interest in how technology and communication talk to each other and push each other to different places. The Apple Macintosh, the Internet and social media kept opening up remarkable opportunities to share knowledge, ideas and opinions.

But its not just the media that was important to us in these endeavours. We set up as a worker’s collective to run both Presses, and were determined to have porous borders to allow people to enter and explore with us. In a way it was like social media in the analogue. I discuss the co-creative nature of both in my PhD (http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/view/rmit:160399, requires login).

2014

MEDIUM

Now we are entering one of the periods that will define publishing into the near future. We’re now familiar with technology that allows us to bounce ideas around the world and gather people around those ideas. We have practices that have been learnt through era of faux-analogue into working directly on the screen of the internet — such as writing this on Medium, and working with media that moves like water from one device to another.

Craig Mod in his article, Far Beyond Snow Fall alerts us to the idea that this is not the translation of print to screen anymore, it is something new. To quote from Mod’s article on our need to look at this phenomenon more closely:

“In a conversation with renowned Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen about the newspaper industry, Joshua Benton remarked, “The perception of the incoming disruptors is that they are low quality, and therefore not really worth paying attention to”. 1"

Let’s stay with Medium for the moment. When I was in New York I met Kate Lee the recently appointed Director of Content. Lee was a New York literary agent until making the shift to Medium. Her shift from the literary scene to a platform and publisher like Medium was a significant indicator that the movement was on.

Lee mentioned the variety of business models that were being trialled in Medium, including her own appointment as a content director. One aim is to bring quality writing to the platform and identify good writing within the open contributions in the Medium community. This sets up an interesting hybrid, a combination of the open and amateur integrating in some way with the professional.

These new models are also well reflected in Arikia Millikan’ article LadyBits’ First and Last Year on Medium. Among these are the payment system for writers and editors. Medium was using a pay-for-view approach, that Millikan points to in her article, where a commissioned ‘collection editor’ was paid 5c per view (calculated via the analytics), which she then used to pay writers 2.5c for their work (she her article for the terms and issues involved). Lee’s role, on the other hand, is across the larger Medium expanse (its crowd, community or contributors, whichever you like as your descriptor). It is, as it claims, a universal publication.

The disruptions that Medium ignites, then works at two levels: it seeks to find ways to employ professionals alongside the amateur and expert-amateur; and it shifts the notion of blogging away from what John Postil refers to as ego-centric blogs that draw people to them, to the universal space which attracts an audience to select and read from the aggregated contributions that are posted to Medium.

While there is material on Medium that falls short of what we would describe as quality, it does herald a type of quality-setting that we can imagine will underpin the next generation of publishing. Others, or course have been involved in this quest for some time. Vimeo, as an example, sets tight guidelines for its community interactions and media, and is respected for the consistency that this encourages and maintains.

In our collection #gloco14 writings, we take this aspiration on board by working with editors to take the drafts through an editorial process before the final ‘publish’ button is pushed.

What else is Medium showing about the future of publishing?

Apart from the economic models it puts forward, Medium is stripping back the overabundance of design choice that has existed in this field — remember MySpace customisation —and argues for a return to simplicity and typographic hierarchy in order for content to again become the hero.

The platform is also an example of hypertext that avoids link-clutter. This is evident in the side comments which minimise unless intentionally opened. These side conversations add richness to the story (in many cases) without interrupting it. They also hark back to marginalia, the use of notes in the margins, some of which were handwritten and became an informal part of the text.

George Landow author of Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Literary Theory and Technology was early to see the link between the footnotes, endnotes and marginalia in academic texts and hypertext. Landow is a Professor of English and Art History at Brown University USA. These works are worth returning to now that the vision is moving beyond the mechanical into a pleasurable reading experience.

INTERNAL MEDIA : CONTENT MARKETING

Another shift we can examine as an example of a new publishing paradigm is the way corporations are taking up content marketing to position themselves within the media landscape. As journalists are driven out of mainstream media, a number of small to large organisations are seeing an opportunity to take them in.

One of these is the ANZ Bank, which now houses Bluenotes, which is an internal media organisation working on the principles of content marketing. That is, rather than producing media about the ANZ, which would be common in a PR environment, Bluenotes has a semi-independent brief to produce media about the economy, policy, financial innovation and anywhere the banking sector interfaces with society. This allows the bank to position itself as a thought-leader in the field. It attracts those who need and trust the information that Bluenotes produces and distributes. The ‘marketing’ side of the content-marketing equation is found in this attraction, rather than more explicit promotional media.

The editor and senior writers in Bluenotes come from the Australian Financial Review, Business Review Weekly, SmartCompany and other mainstream news and current affairs outlets.

These type of innovations are being replicated elsewhere as well. The New Daily, for example, is funded by organisations within the superannuation sector: Australian Super, Cbus and Industry Super Holdings (see ABC News article).

Clearly these changes blur the boundaries that journalism has striven to maintain at its core. Both journalists working in conventional media and those who have moved into content marketing are aware of the dangers to objective reporting when either the media organisation, or the corporation seeks to influence the report. The New Daily specifies, for example, that it adheres to the MEAA Code of Conduct. Nevertheless, we can imagine that there will be occasions when an article is critical of either the host organisation or one of its clients. Of course, this is a perennial issue in the media, and one that will need attention as these iteration of media practices continue to emerge.

NETWORKS AND PUBLISHING

It is useful to now draw these examples of changes in publishing back to our core project, namely the construction of a co-creative knowledge network (CKN). There are two connections that I’d like to make: that media and publishing are central to these networks; and that innovation in media and publishing will continue to forge new forms of collaboration.

Common to both the knowledge network and publishing is the notion of publics and circulation. Michael Warner deals well with both of these concepts in Publics and Counterpublics. I won’t go into them in detail here, other than to point to fact that in constructing a CKN you are drawing together a small public, that will be attracted to your ideas and activities out of their own motivations, as well as what you have to offer. Understanding how publishing works might help you to extend your view of the CKN as circulation network.

With that in mind it is also good to observe how innovation and knowledge interplay in these spaces. As we’ve seen from the relatively short history of social media, major changes have and continue to occur as a consequence. As professional communicators it is in our interests to stay ahead of these changes. One way to fdo that is to tap into the innovations space and speculate on the impace of what is happening there might have on our practices.

These add to your strategic view of the CKN and can make it a window into the future of your own field.

References and sources

Mod, C., Far Beyond Snow Fall, Medium 22 May. See especially Mod’s sections on NY Times Op-Docs and The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie, NY Times, as examples of innovative media applications.

Mod, C., Subcompact Publishing http://craigmod.com/journal/subcompact_publishing/ (accessed 20/09/2014)

Warner, M., Publics and Counterpublics, https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/public_culture/v014/14.1warner.pdf accessed 20.09.2014

Nieman Reports: Mastering the art of disruptive innovation in journalism

Jeff Jarvis, CUNY Entrepreneurial Journalism

Tow Knight CenterFor Entrepreneurial Journalism

And for some entertainment: Slow Motion in a New York Minute www.subtraction.com

http://craigmod.com/sputnik/how_magazine_will_be_changed_forever/