In the halls of a company I ran about 10 years ago, I was joking with one of our senior executives about creating titles for different functions that would reflect the kinds of activity that people were actually doing. “Content generators” was one solution that was thrown out, just as one of our most senior editors came around the corner. He’d heard, but he said nothing, and walked by with a sideways glance.
My kidding-around came off as callous and mercenary, I suspect.
In today’s chaotic media climate, the recasting and renaming of roles is no longer jest: it’s an important element of adapting process to the new realities of content creation and consumption.
Just that word — content — has vastly different connotations from the word that has always been a sacrosanct reflection of art and science — editorial.
Folio posted an article online earlier this month looking at some changes in the way different publishers are organizing their content teams.
The article reflects some ambivalence, from the distressing illustration (pictured here) showing straight-jacketed staffers being pinched between a giant thumb and forefinger, to the discussion of several companies consolidating content teams across loosely related brands in order to help drive cost efficiency.
While these consolidations have always been a feature of economic downturns, a shift towards different content production skills is something new and promising.
Staff structure isn’t the only thing that’s changed. New hires are now required to have a broader skill set, viewing all content as multi-platform. Everything Channel deploys more junior editors on the front lines, who have taken on responsibilities that in the past were handled by a managing editor, assistant managing editor or executive editor.
“Their editing skills, technical skills and packaging skills have to be to a higher level,” Demarzo says, citing assistant managing editor Chad Bernstein, a former healthcare reporter in control of back-end packaging, who now covers the public sector. “Today, the content team inside Everything Channel is, for lack of a better description, a services arm. Our goal is to service the different P&Ls in the organization.”
This ability to create and package content across multiple media is at the core of re-purposing what have traditionally been siloed and expensive processes at magazines.
The dramatic downturn at magazines have hurt everyone on their staffs. But the emergence of a broader skill set around content creation portends the ability to provide the kind of engaging and multi-platform experiences that consumers are currently looking for…and getting…on the web.
