Desk Notes
(Please excuse the mess…still building dreams) ✨
I hate the word content. Since the dot-com boom of the 90s, it’s become a catchall term for everything we make—words, video, audio—invading everyday talk and devaluing the creative process.
“It’s like seeing a cereal box at a store labeled ‘Food (100 grams)’” – Mitch Trachtenberg on Medium. Yes!
I got my first journo job on Country Walking mag in 2000 when Emap was digitised. Many mags were rolling out websites, and they needed loads of copy. A golden era for online publishing—you could be paid well for your words and make decent money online.
Along came CopyBlogger in 2006 (when Julieta was born), and I started blogging on the side. The Content Marketing Institute was set up in 2011 – a sexier and more relatable term than ‘custom publishing.’ Businesses saw the potential of marketing through email.
Twenty years on, everything and its dog is now labelled ‘content.’
I just checked how many Substacks have ‘content’ in the title/description – 100+.
I’ve struggled with this as a small business. How do you differentiate yourself when we all ‘work in content’? I’m still wrangling with taglines: ‘Smart, thoughtful content solutions’. ‘Copy solutions’ (sounds like a print shop). ‘Editorial solutions’ – not catchy. I might go back to saying ‘I’m a writer.’ I’ve taken it off my LinkedIn bio even though I’ve been hired for roles with content in the title.
I write.
I curate. I publish.
I write some marketing materials.
Let’s stop calling it content
I’ve seen many articles about this, across industries, so I’m not alone.
- John Long, Group Creative Director, Ogilvy: ‘Content’ is a terrible term. Please stop using it.
We’ve taken a term for websites and sprinkled it around on pretty much everything. Like a virus, it’s spread — and by definition, it cheapens everything we do. Because the word ‘content’ is just about as appealing as ‘principal substance’ or ‘filler’ or ‘Soylent.’ It sounds like disposable stuff that appears by happenstance, like plaque or lint.
- 10 questions with… Cindy Gallop [The Drum]: “If you could ban one buzzword or piece of jargon, what would it be?”
“Content.”
- Oscar-winning actor and screenwriter Emma Thompson at the RTS Conference [Variety], “To hear people talk about ‘content’ makes me feel like the stuffing inside a sofa cushion. It’s just a rude word for creative people.”
- Writer Clive Thompson: Let’s stop calling it “content” – this got me thinking about the importance of words and how they shape our understanding of the world (and whether a term useful for referring to the whole detracts from the parts).
He says the word ‘content’ is widely used by designers and UX folk because it has an industrial meaning and a specific purpose. We have content design and content strategy as separate disciplines with some crossover. We have ‘content teams’. I can get on board with that.
What I can’t stand is how it’s crept into everyday use (especially in business) as a term to describe everything and all forms of creative expression.
“Quentin, I just love your content!”
Where are we going with it all? I worry about the rise of ‘AI-generated content’ – being trained on trillions of tokens (carbon footprint!!) and the industry’s growing interest in writing via AI (one of the key issues of the writers’ strike).
Tech companies are so hungry for new data (the internet’s not big enough) that some are developing ‘synthetic’ info – i.e. systems learning from what they generate (this NYT piece went viral) #mindfuck.
So, time to put a stake in the ground! Keep up the fight for more clarity and specificity in language and life so we can better understand and relate to one another.
We live in a complicated, fast-moving world, and I get the need for simplicity, abstraction, and mental shortcuts. It’s convenient but lazy to lump all creative work as ‘content’.
Spot on, Emma. We don’t wanna be stuffing in cushions!
OK, so what should we call this stuff?
John Long says be specific:
If you’re making social media, call it that. Or, to be more precise, social campaigns, social videos, and social posts. If you’re making short films, call them that. Copy for a website isn’t ‘content’—it’s website copy. Pictures are photography, images, photographs or illustrations. Podcasts are podcasts. Same goes for editorial, feature articles, white papers, brochures, and packaging copy.
Clive Thompson (replying to the VP of Content at Medium):
It’d probably be good – to, whenever possible, talk about the stuff that people write on Medium using the specific words that apply: Essays, memoirs, explainers, what have you. Even referring to a “post” and a “comment” is more specific than “content”!
Language matters. I’m with Jason Bailey [NYT] on this:
The way we talk about things affects how we think and feel about them. So when journalists regurgitate purposefully reductive language, and their viewers and readers consume and parrot it, they’re not adopting some zippy buzzword. They’re doing the bidding of people in power and diminishing the work they claim to love.
What about you? Do you use the word ‘content’ or hate it too?
Other words I’m coming for: ‘Creator’—simplifies and minimises it. ‘Widget’—what the heck is it? ‘Sticky’ (usually content). ‘Consumer’ ugh. ‘Subscriber’. Too transactional. If I write marketing copy to sell something, it’ll be a separate email.
‘Slop’ – a new term for dubious AI content, is a keeper 😁
Something to discuss with the Substack crew at The Content Spark Summit with Christin Thieme—a FREE full-day virtual event on Substack June 27 to help you spark meaningful connection with your content.
I’m doing a Q&A with Christin to get to know her better so will share that next week—can’t wait to hear her thoughts.
You can book your ticket here.
Nika ✨
My Internetland
I help founders make a global impact with their stories. Life’s too short to play small.
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Nika Talbot 