Thursday, May 28, 2009

Publishing Under 25

It was nice to hear Eric Hippeau of Softbank say pretty much the following from my Pimp My Print post:
If I were heading a publishing house, I would hire a band of 25-30 year old editors/writers, give them a budget to acquire content and have them build a new 'publishing' operation unfettered by print runs, business models and pub dates. Their responsibility would be to create content a target market valued enough to use, to experiment in how to monetize the content and to be able to replicate the model. With guidance - not oversight - provided by the many experienced managers that exist in a typical publishing house the team won't fail. And yes, I would do this TODAY.
He actually said round them up from within your own organization and he did intersperse a 'good luck' but essentially the point was the same. Unfortunately, Eric and the moderator Chris Anderson were off the subject for most of the discussion and there was little real information about "directing investments into new media" which these two were/are uniquely qualified to address. Pity.

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