by Joy Loving, Stations Products and Innovation
Our technological world progresses every hour, minute, and second: smartphone applications, webinars, streaming online content, social networking, e-reading and so on. For the writer, these innovations in public media make it necessary for us to evolve, not only in our craft but in our thinking. As a writer myself, and current graduate student studying professional writing and rhetoric, I sometimes question how I can keep up with these changes. What perspective can I give that has not already been provided?
While the interest in reading things in print is steadily waning among the new generation, some ask, “What will happen to the average writer?” In today’s world, the idea of the “average” writer has changed. It seems like almost everyone these days has a blog. The Internet has made finding topics to write about easier, but also more competitive. If you’ve heard about a new media innovation and wish to write about it, you’d better believe someone else has already had this idea before you and produced it.
Writing is as integral a part of social media as heat is to cooking; the two simply will forever go hand-in-hand. And even though the advances in our society today point to a decline in literacy, writers will always be present.
These days our written formats may have become simpler (blogging, marketing, copywriting, etc.), but the fact remains that we as people still require effective and clear information. People will always require entertainment; we will always seek education. And at the very core of each of these necessities is the orator and power of the pen (or QWERTY keyboard). So will the existence of true, content writers go extinct? I don’t think so – they’ll simply be disguised behind new media faces.