Editor’s Note: This guest post is excerpted from the “oblogatory blig” produced by Vancouver writer Lynne Melcombe, a former associate and longtime friend of our firm. It flags some of the unexpected twists that knowledge producers—including meeting professionals—can expect to run into on the road to new media and “free” content.
According to Gillian Shaw, writing in the January 2 issue of the Vancouver Sun, 2009 may go down in publishing history as the year copyright died.
According to Vancouver Sun and Province publisher Kevin Bent, writing about Canwest Communications filing for bankruptcy protection, business will continue as usual. Yeah, right.
I’ve read enough lately about the impending deaths of both print and copyright that I can no longer argue that they won’t happen—or that they shouldn’t.
But as a person who has made my living by my pen for 25 years, and argued in favour of copyright, I have questions not only about the death of print and copyright, but about what happens to print writers and editors—those who are salaried, and those who are self-employed—after the funeral.
New media experts point out that this is not time first time in history that artists have feared new technologies would diminish their livelihoods. Shaw notes that American composer John Philip Sousa thought player pianos would take business away from real musicians, and I’ve heard other experts say the same about the early days of radio. Instead, musicians just began making money in different ways.
These experts argue that the same principle applies across the board—the death of print and copyright will not be the death of writing, but will simply change the way writers “monetize” their work.
To Vancouver’s Miss604, for example, the issue is not one of direct remuneration but of recognition. “For me monetization comes with having my name on [my work],” Shaw quotes Miss604 (AKA Rebecca Bollwitt) as saying. “For me it is all about the exposure and lassoing that back in and making business opportunities out of it.”
Shaw also quotes Internet and e-commerce expert Michael Geist as saying, “There are going to be some winners and some losers and it’s not going to be copyright that is going to determine that. . . . The winners become those who think out of the box and envision and provide new opportunities that consumers either expect or don’t even realize they want.”
I wouldn’t have said this even a year ago, but I’m now sure that everything the new media experts are saying is true.
That being so, I have a concern that is less about the transition from old to new media and more about the people who will be most affected by it.
Thinking back to player pianos and radio, do we really suppose that there were no musicians put out of work then, or did they just occur in small enough numbers for history to ignore? Will it be as easy to brush aside much larger numbers of print writers and editors affected by our forging ahead into this brave, new media world?
How many sides of a box are there for all those people to think and work outside of? How many lassos can they toss in the air at once without them all getting tangled up and falling fruitlessly to the ground?
I’m not suggesting we don’t forge ahead. There’s too much that’s great about new media not to move forward, even if it were possible not to.
But I am concerned about the glibness of metaphors that belie the enormity of the transition. I know that this transition, like most, will not just be about technology. It will be about people. And I don’t think it’s enough to say that there will be winners and losers, and the winners will be the ones with the best lassos, and the losers will be, well, losers.
Because among those people who have a difficult time adapting, there will be many whose knowledge, skills, and experience should not be lost, and may in fact be entirely transferrable even if they lack the ability to do it themselves.
I would like to hear some of the bright minds of new media addressing that. I would like to hear acknowledgment of what experienced print writers and editors can bring to a medium that is often shy on things like research, fact checking, and proofreading. I would like to hear less about business going on as usual (which, in spite of appearances, I’m sure it is not) and more about the best and brightest of new media working with the best and brightest of old media to make sure that, in the transition, we don’t all end up losing out.