2005: A year of attention seeking

Do I have your attention? Perhaps only for the minute or so it takes to read this post. Then you'll be off reading other blogs, news sites, email, work documents, meetings and so on.

Ever since being interviewed by the dynamic duo over at G'day World Podcast, I've been thinking about what this year holds for IDG as publishers, and the media more generally. One word comes to mind: attention.

It seems I can't escape the idea. First up, an idea I discussed with Cam & Mick in the interview is that perhaps the biggest challenge blogs introduce to media organisations is they distract "our" readers. To generalise, editors can be tempted to think of their "target audience" or "readers" as a collective group of people who have made a vow of loyalty. Every story and publication will be consumed entirely with glee.

The reality is of course entirely the reverse. We have to fight to get people to read every single word. The art - and I do mean art - of journalism is hooking someone in with a headline and dragging them to the back of the article.

The trouble is we've got too many distractions, as Trevor Cook wrote in a great piece for the Fin. The issue of information overload, regardless of whether you read blogs or not, has always and will always be an issue for all types of information publishers. I'm a small case in point, but I've only been back at work four days now (yes, I've been in blog posting denial), and I'm still hopelessly behind on my RSS reading.

Then I come across Doc Searls, who also got the royal treatment (note the impressive butt shot) from G'day World, who argues in a great discource on podcasting that we've got our terminology all wrong:

"We're all peers here. Our relationship, even over a podcast, is symmetrical. Personal. One-to-one, or one-with-one. Despite the numerical asymmetry between speaker and listener, the relationship is symmetrical. It is not the asymmetry of performer-to-audience.

Talk about your "content" or your "audience" and you become much more subject to regulation. You use their language, and their concepts, and you play into their [FCC] hands.

While Doc's talking about issues of Government regulation, he's also underscoring some important changes in the way we think about, and consume information. In essence, the philosophy popularised under the weight of blogs, podcasting and vlogs says people want less regulation, less formality, and direct access to raw material should they choose.

To take it a step further, I've got a hunch this philosophy will see the concept of 'mass media' shift to become something like 'a mass of niche media'. Just take a look at this insightful article in The Age (via Steve Rubel, thanks).

When the Indian Ocean tsunami struck on Boxing Day, readers didn't wait for a newspaper to tell them what happened a day or two after the fact. They wanted information immediately, and they knew how to get it. Within hours witness accounts, photos and video were available on hundreds, if not thousands of blogs.

Steve Rubel is right in that newspapers and magazines are no longer the only information gatekeepers. That's not been the case for a long time, at least in Internet time. The difference in my mind is that traditional media have been joined by bloggers, not overrun by them. The idea that traditional media must accept that they have been eternally backed into a corner by bloggers is, well, propaganda.

Traditional media, like blogs, have their own set of values that determine how news or information is presented. Readers, for want of a better term, give their attention to information sources that either align with or challenge their views, depending on your perspective. My experience shows that people will read your stories if you've got their attention, and importantly if you manage to keep their attention. But does the traditional media have to change? You bet.

It's a subject near and dear to Steve Gillmor's heart, as this quote illustrates:

But with the emergence of the blogosphere, the Times and John M.’s reporting have become one, but certainly not the only, authoritative source. Today, I read John, and Steve Lohr, and their counterparts at the Journal and (until recently) the Merc, as a way of understanding the mainstream media take on the story. At the same time, and with equal if not more weight, I read Adam Bosworth, Dan Bricklin, Dave Winer, Dare Obasanjo, Dan Farber, Dan Gillmor, Doc Searls, Jonathan Schwartz, Jon Udell, and many other voices as they rise and fall on my attention feed.

Together, inextricably intertwined, these voices paint a far more compelling, vital picture than was previously available.

So what does all this mean for me? This is the year of attention seeking. As the noise blog/podcast/vlog noise rises, we (IDG) must continue to remain part of that conversation - and shout louder if necessary.

I'm excited about the opportunities, because I think over in 2004 this buzz got everyone far more interested in media (in all its forms) again. If people are looking for places to invest their attention, that's all good for a business like ours that thrives on conversations.