Is There a Future for Quality in Media?

Does this very question set me up as a nostalgia-sodden, elitist Luddite?

Of course I don’t think so: I believe that there can be no high art without low. I even realize that my use of “high” and “low” smacks of my own convenient and possibly specious value judgments.

But it seems indisputable that the question of quality should underlie every decision organizations make as we look into the compelling, Doppler-broadened future of human communication.

While media and their dissemination have always relied on technology of one kind or another—everything from sticks and cave-friendly pigments to the printing press to the telegraph to the binary code that gives form to these very words—Web 2.0 has made immediate, easily digestible digital media primal. We’re all expected, and expect, to be content creators, relying on the “crowd” to bully, praise or ignore our creations to obscurity or relevance.

It probably shouldn’t be surprising that a kind of Darwinian quality control has emerged in this postmodern media environment. Many traditional publishers appear to be embracing it, slicing away at copyediting staff, borrowing material directly from the amateur blogosphere, and suggesting that extra vigilance by good writers or social editing can adequately counteract any unfavorable effects.

The thinking behind those moves, leaving aside the financial incentives, may be part of what Robert Capps, writing in the August 2009 issue of Wired magazine, identified as the “Good Enough Revolution”:

“The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they’re actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as “high-quality.”

But the rise of the apparently “quick and dirty” might obscure a startling fact: Even quick and dirty has a gestation period.  Everything we are: the ideas we’ve studied, the vocations we’ve pursued, the TV we’ve watched, the company we’ve kept—informs, shapes and permeates the impressions we leave on the world, particularly the data-speed variety that digital media makes inevitable.

I would argue that those impressions serve us best when they are grounded in intention and attention—nothing that inhibits or stifles, but the kind that cradles and buoys. Good magazine recently discussed this notion with the artist, designer and computer scientist John Maeda:

“Maeda sees the benefits of fast and slow: problem-solving “with dirty hands” at rapid speeds, as well as critical thinking and critical making at slow enough speeds to allow for the contemplation of the implications of art and design to the greater world.”

So, perhaps the future is a kind of Third Way, an approach that blends determined excellence with clear-headed flexibility and adaptability, that allows us to duly contemplate the implications of what we say as organizations while keeping our movements nimble.

Perhaps our very attention to the question of quality—deliberately defining it for our communications and, then, committing ourselves to its practice—will reveal the answer.

[image: Todd434]

If you liked this, try:

1. The Quality Hustle
2. The Tao of Quality (Or, What I learned from Auto-Tune)
3. Quality Is Love
4. The Year of Living Quality
5. Don’t Worry, Be Content: 10 Rules for Creating Quality Editorial

Tagged as: Content Marketing, Quality