13 December 2006

Radical transparency at Wired

Chris Anderson, Editor of Wired, author of The Long Tail (insert comma), and ex-colleague, writes a couple of excellent posts about what radical transparency means for magazine publishing -- part 1 is here, and the second part here.

My sympathies are with Chris when he describes the attempted creation of a modern content management system. And my admiration that he is still shooting for it. Putting that to one side, it is fascinating to read his comparison of our expectations in the mid-1990s (aeons ago on the Internet timescale) and now. Then, it was all about portals, driving traffic to your site, creating content for people to come to read, and editors as gatekeepers. Now, search rules (as do blog links!); the web is a conversation conducted via rss; and readers share the control. Or as Chris aptly sums up, the motto is "catalyze and curate".

In the second post, Chris writes about a "fully transparent" media and six tactics it might use -- the upsides and the disadvantages to each. These are truly excellent posts; I highly recommend them.

13 Dec 2006 21:55:16 | Websites

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
Horses for courses Dave Lull sends me a link to a post critical of the classic book Elements of Style, by Strunk and White: Omit Needless Books of Advice on Writing at God of the Machine. It is an interesting post. I don't have much, if any, problem with S&W. Scientists do well to follow the advice when writing up original research, because descriptions of technical concepts, methods and so on are vastly improved by brevity. In particular, the common habit among US authors of applying six or seven adjectives to a noun can be very hard to comprehend when many of the adjectives could equally well be nouns, and the whole consists of polysyllabic specialist terminology (oh, OK, then -- jargon). Whether or not one agrees with the judgement "a strange mix of the anodyne, the obvious, and the risible", S&W's advice is, I believe, of great practical use for people trying to convey complex information in the clearest way. Poetic or creative prose is probably different; I am sure one would not want to be too slavish in following style rules under these circumstances. As a reader, I admire economy of writing style. For me, many modern "bestseller"-type books are far...
PREVIOUS POST
A little bit of history Most people have probably long since done their Christmas shopping. If you are like me and haven't, though, here is a nice idea: Christmas at the History Bookshop. "On our home page you'll find sixteen diverse titles including Marking the Hours, Eamon Duffy's beautifully illustrated book on the English at prayer, The English Year, a lavish celebration of festivals and customs, John Julius Norwich's history of the Mediterranean, The Middle Sea, and the intriguing Dancing into Battle, A Social History of the Battle of Waterloo. There are more titles on page two of our Christmas selection, and throughout all our department pages. All titles are discounted by as much as 30%." The website features some excellent resources: timelines, articles, themes and something called "year view". You type in a year, choose AD or BC, and learn something about that year. I tried some random dates: 1244: Henry III is again refused a new tax at a council of the clergy and barons (December). 1867: Dominion of Canada established by the British North America Act. Four provinces are united within a federal system (1 July). 900 BC: Sparta is founded at "about this time". 500 AD: In Britain, Battle of Mons...

Maxine

Science editor who likes reading crime fiction

Search

Become a Fan

My Other Accounts

Recent Comments