Having used my iPad now for a couple of weeks I have somewhat mixed emotions when I think about it as a product. I love the thing, but I also hate everything about it. Or perhaps I just hate everything I want to love about it and still love the bits I knew I would love anyway.

As a piece of technology it is typically Apple, uncompromising in its aesthetic beauty, technically brilliant and a joy to use (most of the time – app store pah!).

The problems I have are with the economics and the way most consumer media is being designed (repurposed) for it.

First of all the iPad costs £429 at entry level. This is in no way at all a device for all, it is incredibly divisive and separates those who can afford to use and access information created specifically for it and those who can’t. I hate that; I want everybody to have an equal opportunity to access everything using any device. That is the promise of digital media, a ubiquitous, level playing field with equal opportunity.

I wanted to love the magazine apps but they are complete shit. They are not designed for the medium and still try recreating a print magazine rather that creating a digital magazine.

For a start why do they all have a cover? Why the bloody hell does a digital magazine editor think they need a cover in the traditional sense, they all have one and most of them are exactly the same as their print equivalent. It’s lazy, but traditional designers love doing covers. They make headlines and get ‘the market’ excited, shame they are not so exciting for audiences these days.

The constant stream of discussion and worry I hear around consumer magazines is how to pick up NEW audiences. NEW audiences don’t give a shit about magazine covers; they don’t bloody buy them anymore! They like contextual, relevant, usable homepages that guide them through a non-linear experience of media, letting them explore ideas and stories in their own way, at their own leisure.

The joy of using the Internet to consume media is the ability to create one’s own narrative path. Every single (piece of shit) magazine app takes that NEW way of doing things, which NEW audiences enjoy and says this to them:

This is the start, now turn the page. You’re going to read this publication cover-to-cover in a singular linear narrative path, and you better enjoy it because we know best and you don’t”

It’s not a positive use of nostalgia to make things ‘like they were’ but up-to-date, it’s just regressive, lazy design. Perhaps I’m over-reacting. But honestly, do we expect audiences to regress back to such linear ways of media consumption, flipping pages, when every day the multitude of choices presented to us makes linear experiences of media increasingly irrelevant.

Why not instead of taking existing magazine pages and making them look ‘kind of cool’ and animate a bit design something new, and think differently instead of getting the same old school print designers and editors to do the same thing they’ve always done, but make some text side across the screen.

So what is the solution? I don’t think it’s that difficult from an audience perspective.

I believe in the Internet as a non-linear experience of media so want to build websites yes WEBSITES that are ‘fit for iPad’ rather that bundling together content in a magazine app.

NEW audiences have changed the way they consume media, they don’t want 10 different things from one place they want 10 different things from 10 different places, why? Because NEW audiences want expert opinions, and experts niche and focus on 1 thing. It’s up to the publisher what they specialise on and how to grow an audience around that which brings value to the business.

Websites should be built to the latest standards so they render well on iPad and are easy to “Add to Home Screen” with a big glossy logo. There is way more value to publisher and audience in doing this rather than specifically developing an app specifically for iPad.

The value a writer can bring to the publication they work for is being changed by the audience individual writers can create for themselves and how they can move that audience around from publication to publication as their career progresses.

On the current trend of streamlining writing teams across the publishing industry I can see a time when almost all writers will be freelance and hired based on the value they can bring to a publication when aligned with a the particular niche for which the writer has a following. A writer’s salary might then be paid partly based on the traffic they can guarantee to bring to the publication as a result of the following they have.

This already happens with celebrity columnists like Jeremy Clarkson because he guarantees an audience that advocate his opinion, but I’m talking about the myriad of others equally talented writers who are not ‘celebrities’. Being a celebrity writer is different than building yourself a personality led following but there are celebrity elements that come with it, which some writers will enjoy and others won’t.

If, as I think, building an audience through a micro-blogging system like Twitter is essential for writers then the audience will know a lot more about the writers they read the work of than they do now. This might be really worrying for some writers who like to hide behind the veil of the brand they work for, in ‘real’ life they might be a completely different person, which in many ways discredits their work for the ‘brand’ which has been done in a house style, from a house point-of-view.

However people don’t advocate brands in the same way they advocate the figureheads of those brands. For example people are more interested in what Sarah Brown has to say as a person than they are in what the Labour party has to say as a brand, which can be seen by their widely different Twitter followings.

This an awkward example because Sarah Brown hasn’t built her following as a writer she’s built it as a political activist and wife of the former Prime Minster of the United Kingdom. Charlie Brooker’s following and the following of Screenwipe tells the same story through.

Why follow the brand which includes a horizontal of writers opinions and individual styles when you can follow the exact person whose opinion you are interested in. Blogging and Twitter allows the audience to miss out the middle man (the brand) and go straight to the source which ever bradn they might write for.

Newspapers and magazines are becoming irrelevant as a result of their dehumanisation of the author, when they should be placing the author ever more centrally in the products they produce. Blogs and ‘social’ ways of publishing are booming because they place the author at their heart, they are authentic, relevant and intimate; people crave intimacy.

Social media intimately connects people on a human level. Brands are not humans and people will never think about brands or respect them in the same way ever again.

If you are a writer and you are not already starting to build a following on Twitter for yourself, start, quickly. Given the right platform if you have something to say that matters to people, and if you can write it in a way that people identity with and makes your audience advocate what you have to say and tell their friends your value will sky rocket.

Latency has become a massive issue in the delivery of all media, particularly news. We live in a time where on-demand is the norm and products that fall outside that are looking increasingly obscure and irrelevant.

As time goes on the of the period of latency that is acceptable and qualifies information as being “news” is decreasing. 24 hours used to be fine, it was an acceptable latency. Now only minutes and seconds will do.

Sure they only write the last bits that go in newspapers minutes before it’s printed but the latecy to the next edition of the paper is 24 hours at best.

The latency involved with publishing a hardcopy newspaper makes it completely irrelevant to a contemporary audience, who demand accuracy and the very latest, most accurate information. Yesterday’s rumours won’t do.

I write this after having seen somebody on the tube reading the second edition of The Sun which does clearly carry the news that Raoul Moat is dead, I had thought when I saw this “oh that’s good they managed to get it in the paper” it’s not really that good because I saw it first thing this morning on the Guardian website after having seen it on BBC Breakfast, I’ve seen all the pictures and all the video I need to, what can The Sun possibly offer me on this story? Literally nothing.

By now the story that the man was reading on the tube is probably completely out of date, and potentially misleading if any fact has now changed. I’m writing this at 16:41 on Saturday the 10th of July, the Guardian have the story” Raoul Moat killed by single gunshot in standoff with police” which was last updated at 16:18, just 20 minutes ago, so some facts have changed, this is news. The newspaper the man on the tube was reading isn’t news anymore it’s a reference, it covers events that happened yesterday, yesterday isn’t news anymore, it’s history.

It also isn’t news that England are no longer in the World Cup, it’s history a minute; a second after everybody in the country watched the whistle blow at the end of the game. So why do “news” papers all run “England are out of the World Cup” front pages? We already know that! It is completely irrelevant to tell us yet again with your clever headlines, which aren’t funny anymore, we’ve already seen the virals!

The day we went out of the World Cup I’d already read 5 or 10 news stories online analysing every possible angle on why we went out and I’d seen interviews from all the world’s top pundits on TV. If anything the same news being on the front page would make me not want to buy the news(reference)paper, there is no value there for me at all. Contemporary audiences demand value.

The only way you can now cover news is through a latency free digital medium. My generation will not buy newspapers when we’re 35/40. No way. Newspapers have 14/15 years left, it could be less, it won’t be longer. After that all news coverage will be digital, actually it already is!

Henry Moore, Reclining Figure, 1936

I’ve been to see Henry Moore at Tate Britain twice now and I plan a third visit before the exhibition closes in August. My favourite room in the exhibition is the one you come to last, Room7: Elm.

I love the Elm room so much because for me it is the clearest example of the way in which Moore worked, and it demonstrates his genius in vivid form. His genius was to work in collaboration with the material to produce his work, the material is as much part of the artistic process as Moore is.

Moore forms the shapes he makes around the wood, working with the grain to balance his vision against what the material is willing to allow him to do.

When Moore started work on the piece above it was a massive, solid block of wood, he didn’t know the exact grain patterns he would reveal, but he started working comfortable in the knowledge that as an artist he was not completely in control.

When Moore finished I can imagine him standing back and in conversation with the wood congratulating and thanking it for bringing him such monumental success. Without understanding and respecting the material Moore’s work wouldn’t mean so much to so many.

Perhaps when Moore finished making his work he didn’t get the shape he saw in his mind’s eye when he started, but the work is better for it, his sympathy and respect for the material to decide where knees, shoulders, breasts and head all precisely sit make the work wholesome, real and meaningful.

And now for the publishing bit…

Henry Moore served his audience work that was shaped around the material that he carved, we must do the same. As we carve our products into new forms we must continually react to changes in the surface of the material with which we work, we cannot force or dictate them into a shape that cuts across the grain; we are not carving a block of blank chalk but a beautiful piece of Elm.

As publishers this means adapting to the grain of cultural, social and economic shifts and where appropriate carving our products using new developments in technology and changes in editorial direction. We have to work in collaboration with and respect the environment in which we publish.

We can only form our products effectively and create them as art by understanding the raw materials we work with will change dramatically as we move forward, we must be ready to adapt quickly and sympathetically to these changes before we disrupt the grain and spoil our products, it is then that our art falters.

Reading through a couple of articles by Ruth Spellman, Chief Executive of the Chartered Management Institute, a few issues she raises rang alarm bells, and I imagine they will do for hundreds of people across the UK’s publishing industry.

In an article about management style Ruth wrote.

If we are serious about pushing the UK towards economic recovery, businesses need to be innovative, accessible and empowering. It’s what employees need and want.”

Ruth Spellman, 2010

I couldn’t agree more, Ruth.

Detailing the plight of the managers Ruth goes on in another recent article to detail the following.

Yes, managers are currently under a great deal of pressure to restore their organisations back to pre-recession health, but there are no excuses for pushing employees so hard that the health of the individual is sacrificed for the health of the business. Work should be a place where people are built up, not broken down.”

Ruth Spellman, 2010

Read the last sentence again, it’s remarkable but it really shouldn’t be, it should be standard practice; we should take it for granted this will happen.

“Work should be a place where people are built up, not broken down.”

Imagine working in a business where the driving force was to build up employees, make them better, bring them a wealth of experience and look after them. That would be good for employees and for the business, especially in these hard times.

The requirement for good management steps up a level and becomes a lot more serious when you look at the implications bad management can have on the health of employees and what that means for the business.

If employers need a financial incentive to develop smarter processes to avoid putting pressure on their workforces to deliver more for less, they should bear in mind that presenteeism — underperforming at work due to ill-health or stress — costs the economy £15bn each year, almost double the cost of absenteeism. This fact alone should encourage employers to do more to manage increased workloads, keeping morale and staff productivity levels up.”

Ruth Spellman, 2010

Management is a two-way thing. Most managers don’t get this, they don’t realise they are managing humans, they think they are just managing a spreadsheet. Most managers don’t innovate, and they aren’t accessible or empowering because they don’t understand the employer/employee equation involves delicate unpredictable human emotions not raw data, which can be manipulated at the click of a button to tell them what they want.

And why does this happen? Because only one in five managers have any type of professional management qualification. A lack of qualified managers has bred a class of authoritarian, bureaucratic and secretive managers obsessed only with the maintenance of their own seniority. This doesn’t work, it isn’t productive, and it ultimately leads to failure for all involved.

All employers have a duty of care to employees and are legally required to assess the risk of work-related stress, it is a duty of care the UK publishing industry does not take seriously, this needs to change if the task managers have of “restoring their organisations back to pre-recession health” is to be achieved.

In an industry that has taken big hits and suffered harshly at the hands of the recession we need innovative, accessible, honest and open managers who can create an environment where the people left after the streamlining process of the last two years can be built up and bring the UK’s publishing industry a new lease of life.

You wouldn’t expect a broken lens to take a perfect picture, it will take one, but it will come out looking like half the image it could have been, even if the person processing the image isn’t making a mistake.

A lack of clarity is a very real and present danger in publishing, without leaders and working environments that provide clarity products fail their audiences, and businesses fail their employees; breaking the duty of care that is legally afforded to them, which results in stress and anxiety in the workplace. This is not acceptable in any circumstances.

Without a working environment that aspires to deliver its product or service with clarity of thought and vision at all levels, the only result can be a failure to meet the product’s maximum potential.

Clarity must come in 4 areas to avoid failure:

1. Clarity of communication:
   Communication chains must be clear and open. Nobody must be hidden and nothing covert.
2. Clarity of strategy:
   A strategy needs to be unambiguous, focused and forthright.
3. Clarity of planning:
   Planning must seek to deliver on the answers the strategy is finding for the business.
4. Clarity of execution:
   Plans must reach those who execute them in a clear framework so all objectives are met.

A lack of clarity in any of these areas will play havoc when trying to deliver a media product. Decisions will be hard to make, then misunderstood and not executed correctly.

It is not a clear management strategy to keep people in the dark, avoid talking to them and conduct one’s self in a manner other than that which leads to amicable understanding.

Media products are complicated, they require editorial, commercial and technical input. Due to this complex nature the need for clarity in operational procedures is vital to assure products meet their full and unadulterated potential.

Let me be clear:

A lack of clarity is a fatal black hole, which will swallow up everything in its path and end in disaster for publisher and audience.

Image by Spencer Tunik

People like making and maintaining human connections; they are what make us who we are. The people we form these connections with become acquaintances and friends; you can have a shared experience with these people that make a valuable addition to your life. If you form a connection like this you mutually advocate each other, this is a positive, active, human connection.

These human connections mean a lot more than the passive brand connections many people have with media products, and which some brands are actively looking to increase without thinking about what value, if any, these passive followings really have.

We don’t just need more people following us, we need more acquaintances and friends, we therefore need to make our brands more human and personable so people form relationships in which they feel they can advocate what we do.

The image above isn’t included for titillation or shock value. Specer Tunik once said of his art that the subjects are pivotal to the work. His work is credible because those involved completely buy into the idea, they advocate it, they are not just a following but working in collaboration with him to produce something startling, special and completely unique. Art.

It never ceases to amaze me when ordinary people get into the spirit of what I’m doing. It’s pivotal to my art.”

Spencer Tunik

People are pivotal to media products. Our products are our art.

Publishing brands are losing their credibility and relevance because audience expectations around forming connections with them have changed. This is due to the proliferation of interpersonal methods of digital communication like email, forums, Facebook and Twitter. The ability to share information with other people in real-time is easier than it ever has been and we maintain regular communications with more people than we ever have done, so why should we listen to what a brand has to say with the same level of interest as a human connection? We shouldn’t and we don’t.

There is still massive value in the media brand as a platform to enable professional content creation but more than ever before it is the personality and human behind the brand operating on the platform in which our audience are interested in and want to form a meaningful connection with. If the opportunity to do that is absent for the audience they don’t buy into it.

To facilitate the audience advocating our brands we must humanise them to the greatest degree possible, the audience should feel they can connect with the people behind the brand and form a connection with us on a human level.

It’s a Sunday afternoon and we’ve got The Sunday Telegraph and The Sunday Times on the go in the living room, the floor is a patchwork of around 25 different papers and supplements (some are possibly from yesterday’s Times), many of these papers have accumulated next to me as I slowly plough my way through them with great delight.

My dad had made his way through the particular supplement he was reading and asked me to pass him The Telegraph’s Seven section, I recommended he reads The Times Culture section, which is my opinion a better entertainment supplement, and passed him both. As you can see by the delight drawn across his face above he agrees with my recommendation!

My interest in this exchange is the mutual experience we are having of the media in which we invested. The 25 or so supplements, which are now also being passed around to my sister and have even interrupted my mum’s eBay addiction, are all part of an incredibly flexible product.

The act of sharing the content isn’t at all complicated. Only one person can be reading a unique part of the product at one time, recommendations can be made by us individually based on our knowledge of the others unique interests. We can see the products and move them around our physical space, picking them up and passing them from hand-to-hand when necessary or waiting for them to be finished with before we read them.

I passed my sister a particularly good picture feature in today’s Times Magazine, which I knew she would be interested in, and my dad as I write this has just plonked an article from last week’s Observer (which is still kicking around) in front of me about the first 10 years of Tate Modern, because he knows I love the gallery. I’ll read it when I’ve finished this.

We discuss articles as we read. Dad has just found out that “Valerie Singleton lives in Somerset” a fact contextually relevant to our location. Due to the nature of the medium we’re all engaged in a valuable shared experience of the content in which we’ve invested. This experience would seem to me infinitely more difficult to recreate in a digital form.

What happens when papers are no longer printed and we all have an iPad on which we read our Sunday papers? The experience of the media may be regressive; the tablet we are viewing media on would be one of stone, which needs to be passed from caveman to caveman in its entirety.

The iPad and similar devices are going to be extremely exciting mediums to work with and I look forward to the changes that will happen to the media products we make and consume. We must however recognise that as well as building new products those in existence now have some very uniquely engaging properties by the virtue of their physicality, which we should be extremely careful not to overlook and devalue in the development of the new products.

On a bank holiday weekend I cherish the experience of Sunday papers, if only I didn’t have this bloody ink all over my hands!

Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor have changed the face of Saturday night TV. Simon Cowell has revitalised the talent show format and turned it into an engaging collaboration with the audience.

Crucial to the success of these programs has been Cowell himself, who is the key brand filter for his audience. Indeed the hook of the early rounds in these shows is down to the producers of them getting in acts that are so bad Cowell has to filter them out to dramatic effect, the audience love this, they love the truth.

I’m only saying what everybody else is thinking”

Simon Cowell 2009

Cowell can’t lose on The X Factor because he filters out the chaff and allows people to vote on the acts they are most likely to invest in. This is good for him and good for his audience, there’s a mutual value in this relationship. This value reveals the truth in talent and the talent is then honestly recognised as a result of the the brand’s collaboration with its audience.

Key to the success of this formula is the brutal upfront honesty which Cowell indulges in to the delight of the audience, addressing the contestants head-on means the audience respect his opinion as the figure head of the brand, they then desperately want to be part of the collaborative process later down the line and engage with the brand frequently.

Audiences are often asked to do too much work when brands want them to engage with a vote. Completely open votes initiated by a brand with a target audience don’t work, people aren’t that interested in them. The brand’s involvement is irrelevant and it doesn’t resonate; people want to know what the brand thinks, otherwise what is the brand’s value in this equation? Enablement? Devices enable, brands filter.

If both parties, the brand and the audience, are on the same wave length a relationship is formed that can both parties can act on, working together like this means the experience of narrative; which results from the voting process is more tangible, meaningful and valuable.

The value of a brand is increasingly in its ability to collaboratively filter the world for its target audience so they are completely engaged with the values the brand holds, Cowell recognised this early and has utilised it to devastating effect.

I watched this video of Rishad Tobaccowala (Chief Innovation Officer at Publicis) this morning and it really resonated with me.

Rishad discusses the important role talented people play in building and sustaining successful creative businesses. Talent is so critically important but seems so inexplicably overlooked and undervalued in the publishing industry.

I truly believe that the industry and the companies that have a disproportionate share of passionate talent will beat everybody.”

Rishad Tobaccowala, 2010

So do I, Rishad.

During these times when the publishing industry has the potential to enter a renaissance; brimming with new opportunities, it will only be the companies with a talented, motivated and inspired team that will taste true success.

How do you motivate and inspire talent?

The next generation (my generation of 20 something ambitious professionals) want wealth. As Rishad explains we want three kinds of wealth.

1. Experiential wealth
Give me an opportunity now and make it exciting.

2. Educational wealth
Surround me with good people and teach me.

3. Economic wealth
Pay me appropriately and allow me skin in the game.

If the next generation of talent are not given the opportunity to grow their wealth in these ways they will find somewhere else to build. This will be the death of the professional publishing industry. No builders, no products, nothing to sell, no money made, business dies.

The publishing industry is in flux, which makes it difficult to provide this triple play of wealth to the next generation of talent because it is predominantly tied up and focused at the previous generation who are motivated and incentivised by building and maintaining their own seniority.

Unfortunately the value in real terms of the previous generation during the renaissance is completely out-of-sync with their price tag when compared to the talent that will make the new business models, which are so frequently speculated on, a reality.

I’ll finish with another quote from Rishad, which perfectly sums up how I feel the publishing industry should be thinking.

Let’s get back to the audacity and the dreams, and you know what, the spreadsheets will fill up beautifully.”

Rishad Tobaccowala, 2010

Every facet of the publishing industry stems from talent. Nothing else even comes close. If you don’t sit up and recognise that your business is a Dodo.

(Via Cultural Fuel)