Jackson Miller

I had lunch with a couple of the guys from StudioNow today. It got me thinking again about the value add good editors can provide in today’s world where we are all creating (blogs, pictures, videos, etc).

For those that don’t know, StudioNow is a local (Nashville) company that can take a bunch of raw creative (videos, pictures, audio, etc) and returns a finished product (music video, TV commercial, digital marketing pack, etc). The way they do this is by essentially crowd sourcing to a large pool of professional editors who have the skills and tools necessary to create a polished final product. They play in many different vertical markets and it sounds like 2008 will be an exciting year for them.

This makes a lot of sense. 2007 was the year of “user generated content” (or how about the year where you and I rediscovered our creativity). Seven percent of all US adults are blogging. YouTube is a household brand. Non-geeks are sharing pictures on sites like Flickr and Picasa and major chains like Walgreens and Target are getting in on the action by allowing you to order prints directly from these photo sharing sites. The thing is, all this “creative” is pretty raw and unpolished.

For a couple of years we have been hearing about how newspapers and magazines are going to die and be replaced by blogs. Anyone who has read some poorly thought out diatribe on blogger.com knows that is a bunch of hogwash. At the same time, big media companies like CNN and Gannett are clamoring to get their hands on the pictures we are taking, the video we are recording and the stuff we are writing. You know what they do when they get it? Put it through some editorial review and pass the best stuff along to their viewers / readers.

There is so much great stuff out there, but so much more crap. Up until now the model (gawker, weblogs inc, etc) has been to hire some of the best creative talent and pay them to be staff writers. As far as I know, these writers are their own editors. MusicCityBloggers.com has a slew of unpaid writers and then a couple of people who are scheduling and providing some minimal editing. I think we will start to see more editors in this brave new world of conversational media.

I think I have written before about an idea of editors creating new magazines / periodicals. Instead of hiring staff writers, why not hire great editors to find the best content and glue it together in a clear and coherent package. Often times magazines have a theme for a particular issue. Right about now every magazine on the shelf is either looking back at 2007 or looking forward at 2008. It is no surprise that many bloggers are currently on the same theme. I would think that someone could create a competitor to Wired by paying bloggers for posts they have already written. The editorial staff could find the best posts, offer to pay the bloggers a price based on the subscription numbers. The magazine could be printed and shipped out by some on-demand printing shop like what I hear Ingram has here in Nashville.

Which brings me back to StudioNow. I can record video and take pictures and such, but it is really hard for me to create a finished product that people would really enjoy. With the current writers’ strike I have heard people speculate on the possibility of people creating TV shows without the same massive machine that we have today, but those ideas are quickly tossed out because the finished product of most video blogs etc is not even close to the quality we are accustomed to seeing on television. The thing is, just as there are all these people out in the cloud writing and recording, there are also a bunch of talented editors out there. StudioNow allows these talented editors to pick projects from a list and get paid quickly and reliably. This editing-on-demand has so many possibilities. People who want to take blogging seriously could hire a print-editing service to clean up drafts and maybe add a nice picture etc. Podcasters could their creative off to audio editors to clean it up, put on the intro and outro and select some advertising.

People are willing to pay for video and print as long as the quality is worth it. If they don’t want to pay for it, they will at least put up with advertising if the quality is good enough. Editors can raise the quality bar in the world of conversational media. Companies like StudioNow can facilitate an affordable way for such content to be edited quickly.

Could it be that 2008 is the year of the editor?

This post could really benefit from an editor. The irony is not lost on me.

Thanks to Sam Davidson for pointing to Seth Godin’s post about editors from around the same time.