Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

If we’re gonna call it content, we might as well call it shit

06.06.2012 by David Murray // 1 Comment

I've written here about my distaste for the term "content" as a description of what writers and editors and photographers and video people and designers make. I sent my Facebook friend, the Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg, my piece on his newspaper's public declaration that it's now a "content" company.

Steinberg agreed the term is odious, and he elaborated:

"Content creation" is an unfortunate term, like a baker who calls her fresh baked dinner rolls "various complex starches." There's nothing wrong with being a techno/business sort without poetry in your soul. But Jeez, have some subtleness. If I were selling curry buns to the Chinese, I would have the good sense to call my product, "Golden Good Fortune Happy Necessary Joy Pillows" or some such thing. I would not call them "Extruded Glop to Fill the Bellies of the Chinese," which has a tone very much like, "content creation." Do you want to read created content? I sure don't. That may be what it is, but I expect businessmen and leaders to draw the veil a little."

And of all people, who better than professional "content creators" should understand the need to avoid chilling warm customers with cold industry jargon?

But I'd go one further and say that we shouldn't use "content" in our own industry circles. Such terminology is bad for the morale of storytellers, who are especially sensitive to the notion that their words and images are just filling up buckets.

Or as a graphic designer once yelled over a cubicle wall when she saw that my copy came up short in her page layout, "Dave, you gotta write some more shit."

Let's not write more shit. Let's not create more content.

Let's tell stories.

Let's express opinions.

Let's have conversations.

Let's communicate.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Chicago Sun-Times, content creation, content industry, Neil Steinberg, shit, summer to diss "content"

Progress: Fake it ’til you make it

06.02.2010 by David Murray // Leave a Comment

This is the sort of statistic that, despite devastating funding cuts at all 600 Chicago Public Schools, further overcrowding their hot classrooms with dysfunctional kids and captained by teachers on the fence between apathy and uncontrolled rage, the Chicago School Superintendent would like us to take as good news.

From the Sun-Times last week:

"Reports of serious student behavior problems have dropped 77 percent at six targeted schools—and Chicago Schools CEO Ron Huberman credited his $60 million anti-violence initiative."

Yay.

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // anti-violence, Chicago Public Schools, Chicago Sun-Times, Ron Huberman

The best stories lead themselves

09.01.2009 by David Murray // 3 Comments

The first sentence of a story in today's Chicago Sun-Times: 

"A man who allegedly has about 14 aliases and an arrest record across the country was being uncooperative with police after he was shot then struck by a CTA bus Monday night on the Southwest side, police said."

Categories // Uncategorized Tags // Chicago Sun-Times, story leads

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