Todd Mundt

I’ve been thinking about something Nico Flores wrote a few days ago:

Content is nothing on its own. It only exists as part of conversations — understood not in the usual ‘blogsphere’ sense of deliberation, but as shared concerns (not my term), concerns that we must partake in to be part of communities. When I buy a novel I choose it not just because I think I might enjoy it, but also because it is also being read by other people, because it’s part of a larger movement that I’m interested in, or because it is relevant to something else I read. Reading is satisfactory only if I bring with me a certain baggage; and reading will add to my baggage, allowing me to appreciate other works and, crucially, to have more of a shared background with people around me. My point is that content–or, more precisely, the transaction of consuming content–is only meaningful as part of a wider conversation that is made up of countless related transactions.

And here is Terry Heaton, from his latest brilliant essay, The On-Demand Trap:

Doug Rushkoff argues effectively that the web is a social phenomenon, not a media phenomenon or a technological phenomenon. This makes traditional media people uncomfortable, because it demands a response other than the content-provider safe haven. [...]

Involving yourself with real people in a real online community setting takes a skillset and values that most broadcasters don’t seem to possess.

If, as the Cluetrain crowd asserts, markets are conversations, then the web is the new marketplace and all “content” is commoditized to a point where it’s a conversation starter at best or merely a diversion at worst. Either way, the “content” concept is far down the priority list of the marketplace, and interactivity with human beings is number one.

One of the conclusions is that our content requires context to have value. Not necessarily earth-shattering - we public broadcasters have long believed that our content needs ears: Think Audience.

We’re adding a slight twist to the “tree in the forest” - someone needs to hear it and then tell someone else about it. That’s not entirely new, either. Public radio’s growth over the last 15 years has happened, in large part, because people listened and then said, “I heard it on NPR.”

The part that we’re struggling with now seems to be realizing the full implications of Nico’s statement: the transaction of consuming content is only meaningful as part of a wider conversation that is made up of countless related transactions. The web can bring the watercooler, the “I heard it” to us, and it will bring it right to our web sites, if we let it. This makes many of us nervous; we’re afraid of what people might say, how they might say it - how they might contaminate the content we’ve labored over so lovingly. But if we’re willing to accept that our listeners have participated with us in making public radio a significant and growing force in American life - with their attention and their money - then we’re going to have to understand and believe that the online manifestation of their participation with us - this more direct and intimate participation - will also strengthen us and make us greater still.

There are lots of paths - from the very basic (comments), to more developed user-generated content (essays, commentaries, blogs), to the complex and fascinating (MPR/APM’s Public Insight Journalism, and allowing users to create content from our content). This isn’t about choosing one of them. It’s about choosing the form(s) of interaction that works for each element of our online presence, experimenting, making deliberate mistakes, learning.

Ultimately, it’s about realizing public media’s potential as a hub of cultural and intellectual life.