Local Government Channel

Is Content Really King anymore?

06/08/2010

Getting up this morning I listened to the news on the radio. Checked my in box for email newsletters I’ve subscribed to and read the newspaper whilst having my breakfast. I read another newspaper on the way in and have been catching up on favourite news sites since logging on at work. So in the last two hours I’ve consumed literally hundreds of news stories and have paid very little indeed for them.

SO is content really king? Or is it really now just another commodity? I don’t know how they monitor this but I’m told we are bombarded by several thousand media ‘messages’ of all sorts in a day. SO are we diluting our content to such an extent that it is both free and, in many ways, worthless?

Well I’m not sure. I agree that in many ways news is a ubiquitous  resource. I can get today’s headlines from a number of free sources with such thin business models that I wonder how they keep going. But there are also stories out there of real value to people. And it’s not just premier league football – though that’s valuable enough – there are many sources of slightly more obscure information that can really make a difference.

Take a project we’re working on with the Local Government Group’s Efficiency Exchange. A fairly simple idea really. They’ve created on-line communities of interest where like-minded people can get together and discuss things backed up by relevant material and video interviews.

And it’s for a very important purpose. Because some within local government have started to realise what many of us have yet to grasp. The cuts in government spending are going to be so deep that just tinkering round the edges isn’t going to hack it. It’s going to take a fundamental re-think of how we deliver public services – and that’s a discussion well worth taking part in.

 

Stephen Horn, CEO WebsEdge



  


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