Kim's Blog

The Quality of Our Content: a Response to Stephen King

Posted on September 18, 2009 at 11:22 AM

I have a confession to make: I love celebrity gossip magazines. You’d be hard-pressed to find me on a vacation without OK!, US Weekly, or Star magazine in my hands.

On business trips, I try to keep it a bit more professional, though on a long flight home after a busy business trip, I’ll admit I’m still not whipping out The New Yorker. On my latest flight, a trip home from Commission Junction (you can read more about it on my Twitter), I settled in with Entertainment Weekly, and read one of my favorite columns, Stephen King’s “The Pop of King.” After reading his latest column, “What’s Next for Pop Culture?” I had to respond. This global conversation about content and its quality is a discussion I am having on many different occasions. As many of you know, Shakespeare Squared has been creating quality content in various formats for various industries for the past 8 years, so I’m pretty well-versed on the issue—and I thought King’s article was brilliant!

Uncle Stevie has detailed an overall problem occurring in content – whether it be a book, a movie, or a TV show. He intimates that we as a society are slowly eroding storytelling. In each category that content is delivered, we are seeing technology and the bottom line dominate decision making in a place where the decisions should be dominated by the art.

I am a business owner, so I understand the Catch-22.  I’m interesting in making money. Marketing, sales and PR are becoming a melting pot for content, and content can be communicated well through these channels. But these channels don’t require—or utilize—the creative, beautiful storytelling of books, music, movies and television. And unfortunately, such cursory content is leaking into these artistic avenues—will it spell the demise of each?

Next week I’m going to look at each category of pop culture that King discussed. Check back each day—I’d love to hear your comments!