Does Free Publishing Mean No Publisher?

Yesterday I was listening to a panel at SXSW 2009 with amongst other Clay Shirky talking about the future publishing model. I have listened to many similar panels discussing the future of the web, media or news. They ironically all usually end up with either throw out the old, or the new is terrible. Very few panels have had the guts of saying that the solution will be somewhat in between it all. It is a blended solution that will work, not the extremes. As usual. :-)

Content has a life cycle of it’s own and the value of content is pretty much built up by it’s freshness (how breaking is the content), how unique is it, and how emotional appealing (i.e. relatable) the content is. Breaking news content will always be in high demand. The life time and stickiness of the content improves with supporting relevant material such as context, facts and opinions, together with providing the audience with the capability of interacting with the content with ratings, comments and topical forums.

The media scene is continuously moving more towards the ultimate content mashup between traditional and user generated media on a topical basis. These are not opposing mashups, but symbiotic mashups between traditional media content and new media content. The articles are no longer essay like, but more a mosaic of different media types (images, videos, blogs and news articles), different angles, different presentations and such. Essentially, you will have three main components to the presentation (which by the way is the same model Allvoices is applying):

- The Report - The report is the foundation of the media experience. Anyone can report from anywhere via cellphone or PC, sharing news, images, videos and opinions.

- The Related Voices, Opinions and Facts - Around the report multiple perspectives are woven together that is have a collection: News stories, Blog posts, Images, Videos via contributors and aggregation.

- Discussion, Consume and Rate - For each of the presentations you will enable the community to emotionally connect with others around the world through discussion, rate the story and in the community spirit complete the human story.

Key in all of these components is the freedom of contribution, interaction and discussion. It is an absolutely necessity to have this free, and really a natural consequence of freedom of speech. It has to be free and open. To all people. By any means. Everywhere. Essentially, all these components build the human story and the provided context, facts and opinions built up by other user contributions and aggregation grounds the discussion. Ironically all these characteristics of the content actually provides you with the necessary components of the quality assurance system. It is the ultimate long-tail system.

I usually describe the new content media arena with the analogy of imagining a party. Which party would you like to go to: the party with all the detailed instructions what to wear, what to do, what to not say, what to say. Or would you prefer the laid back come as you are party. I would choose the rock n' roll party any day. Why? It is fun. It is free. But... Most importantly I can relate to it. I can relate to it. That is the key. Sure, you will need some logistics for the rock n' roll party too, but the script is not already set.

You have to be able to relate to the media you consume. It has to be human. You realize now that media is not about what you think others think. It is about bringing that human face to the story with all its warts, dirt and shit. But it is real. It is authentic. It is genuine. It is the real story. Not perfect, but relatable. Yiiiha!

One of the comments from the audience on the publishing models were "What purpose do you [publishers] serve in the future since you can't be a filter anymore? That's why you're disappearing." I guess I see his point, but he is still wrong.

The we against them mentality will not work. Maybe it is easier to think it would, but it is not. It is actually inhibiting to the process we need to carry out.

No. Free publishing does not mean no publisher. It just means that we open up for more distributions channels and create alternatives. You can look at it as some kind of marketing content economy.