Ok, I’m coming clean and telling you up front this post is going to be a rant! If you are looking for images of wildlife, come back Wednesday as I have a new visitor in my backyard I plan on sharing with you all.

I think the creative world received some very good and much needed news last week. That news was that the NY Times would be charging for their content including online distribution, not just home delivery of the paper and ink version of their newspaper (NY Times Letter to Their Readers). Why is it good news? From the perspective of someone who has had a long business career and a very short creative career, I could never understand why the publishing world allowed their franchises to melt over the last few years. It seems to me that publishers took a defeatist attitude when people wanted to read their publications via electric means and not in the print form. Instead of adapting and giving the customer what they wanted, they acted as if their customers were not there anymore.

I for one believe this is great news for the creative industry. I have no doubt that the demand for content is continuing to rise. Unfortunately because of uncertainty and/or indecision on electronic distribution of content revenue models, the readers of the publications and those that created content for said publications suffered. Readers suffered by having less options delivered the way they wanted and content creators were payed far less and in many instances fired from their jobs, all while the publishers themselves suffered from weakening financial profiles.

While I could never understand why the publishers allowed their content to be given away for free, I am glad that the NY TIMES is taking a first step in reversing this ridiculous trend. If you are in love with the ad soaked internet pages that provide content then you might not care about the NY Times announcement. But if you, like me are tired of popups and ads all over the place, then you will support the NY Times and other content delivery services to ensure we have top quality publications in the future. As I stated before, the demand for content is not going down, it is going up. What is changing is the way consumers want to expose themselves to this content. Give the consumer what they want, how they want it and stop giving away your content! 😉