By EUGENE G. SCHWARTZ [ForeWord] – We thought then that marketing resided in editorial, which is why it took so long for publishers to actually create the marketing function and extract it from editorial. It has been and continues to be the instinct of the editor and the author that positions the theme, the message and the execution in a place where the reader finds a home.
The new editorial mission in the digital and multi-media age will not change – but the technologies of expression — and how reading is experienced — require skill-sets that may silence – and have silenced — some writers and editors before their time (as with designers who didn’t make the leap to desktop thirty years ago) – but I doubt its permanence. The expressive and editorial urge is too strong and word-smithery still remains at the heart and gateway to communications in all media.
What I do feel is up for grabs – and the future uncertain – is how the word-based narrative skills through which precision and nuance as well as imagination are expressed, will fare in the portable multi-media devices of the future, and in the business models that emerge to reach their markets. I know (to the extent certitude is possible) they will continue to thrive. The digital age will make it more likely, paradoxically, as the barriers to entry and to reach narrow-cast markets continue to drop.
Continued at ForeWord | More Chronicle & Notices.
