Alan Brandon

Great post over on Brain Pickings about what’s wrong with media today — based on an editorial from 1923! The Death of the Editor and the Rise of the Circulation Manager, by Maria Popova, looks at today’s media issues such as SOPA, copyright, and content farms through the lens of an article titled “Our Changing Journalism”.

It’s interesting to see New York Globe editor Bruce Bliven decry the onrush of modern technology and it’s affect on journalism and the media. Of course, he’s referring to “the telephone, high-speed rotary presses, stereotyping, typesetting machines, color presses, rotogravure, [and] the electric telegraphic typewriter.”

With the combination of responsive web design, modern content tools such as Madcap Flare, and the proliferation of mobile internet devices for viewing content, it has become so much easier for technical communicators to design and create documentation that meets the need of their audience when — and where — they users need it.

While the leading-edge examples get the buzz in tech comms circles, I think the majority of user docs are still designed according to concepts and practices from five or ten years ago. That is, they still have at their heart a WinHelp or even paper baseline for the design and content decisions.

Many old-school technical communicators have an “architecture mindset” as Ethan Marcotte describes in his post on A List Apart:

English architect Christopher Wren once quipped that his chosen field “aims for Eternity,” … Unlike the web, which often feels like aiming for next week, architecture is a discipline very much defined by its permanence. … Creative decisions quite literally shape a physical space, defining the way in which people move through its confines for decades or even centuries.

For each separate viewing experience — paper, online help, web, mobile — designers would (and often still do) create a new architecture for delivering the content. But now the tools and support to truly separate the content from its delivery are widely available.

Not all technical communicators want to work this way. It’s different, and possibly scary. As Scriptorium’s Sarah O’Keefe keenly notes:

Technical communication is in the midst of a huge transition from a craft/artisan model to an engineering model.

But I think most professional technical communicators welcome the new technology, and the new opportunities to deliver information in better ways. As responsive design, flexible content tools, and mobile delivery truly hit the mainstream, they will bring a huge, positive change to the way user documentation is created and delivered.

I’m impressed so far with the redesign of the Boston Globe website. The new layout is clean and easy to use, but best of all it now features responsive design so that the page display adapts to whatever device you view it on. I have only casually browsed the site so far, but I have tried it on my notebook, smartphone, and color ebook reader. (OK, that’s a ThinkPad, Droid Incredible, and Nook Color.) The stories are easy to find and follow on all devices, and site performance seems good (unlike the old boston.com sluggishness).

I currently subscribe to home delivery of the Sunday Boston Globe, and every time the paper is wet, missing, or late I think seriously about canceling. However, access to the new online Globe is now included with the subscription. I think this new redesign may be enough to keep me subscribed.

I always hoped that if I was going to be replaced by a robot, it would look something like the one in the Terminator movies. Instead, thanks to Narrative Science, I’m going to be replaced by a lowly piece of software.

Narrative Science, a software company based in Evanston, Illinois, has developed technology that “transforms data into high-quality editorial content.” Great. I thought that’s what I had been doing for the last 25 years as a technical communicator. What’s next, an iPhone app that writes Moby Dick?

Actually, Narrative Science’s software is pretty cool. It’s already being used to create sports articles based on uploaded game stats. Check out this example on GameChanger (and some background on the GameChanger and Narrative Science deal here).

Also, check out this comparison at Business Week. See if you can pick out which of the three examples was written the evil job-stealing robot Narrative Science software, and which was written by the poor beleaguered human writer.

Narrative Science is looking to expand beyond sports stories to create narratives from all sorts of structured or unstructured data. Possibilities include financial reports, real estate listings, and so on.

I don’t know how far this type of technology will go. But to be on the safe side, I think I’ll start developing skills in a backup career. Perhaps robot repair?

This is old news (in more ways than one), but the AP Stylebook now officially endorses “website” as the one-word term for, you know, websites. The Wired Epicenter blog has a nice write-up:

Of course, the cool kids have been tossing around “website” for at least a decade. But that’s the way it is with usage: Even when it does happen, it takes a while for language disruption to become a middle class value.

The added emphasis is mine.