The phrase fairly popped off the screen in response to a post I’d made (citing ‘content providers’) on a list for tech writers. This list, as one can imagine, has been full of grief and worse as the recession forces publications, already strapped by business models that had not factored an internet-connected world, to jettison writers, both staff and freelance, in numbers not seen in memory.

Indeed, even online media ’successes’ are canning writers (and photographers, videographers, graphic artists et al.) about as fast as their email systems can deliver the ‘paperless’ version of the pink slip. To put it mildly, there is currently a significant ‘overcapacity’ of skilled, competent, deeply knowledgeable writers, the very people who’ve so ably chronicled the rise of high tech.

Some colleagues bemoan the fact that such skills no longer seem to be valued – but I don’t think that’s the issue. Readers still greatly prefer clear, definitive accounts of the topic at hand vs. something worse. The real problem is twofold: one is a classic case of ‘creative destruction’ in which a once successful old-line business gives way to a new one, better suited to a new world. In this case, businesses find that focused ads associated with search are a much better use for ad dollars, vs. the old scattershot model of display advertising, once the lifeblood of print periodicals (and early online sites).

The other is a simple case of supply and demand. To be continued, including revelation of the author of the phrase above…

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