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Thanks to BoSacks for passing over this Time article on Content Becoming a Pauper. 

The story is worth the read, but here is a little snippet that sums up the author's point. As you can tell, he is taking the viewpoint on the value of content as it pertains to traditional media companies.

"The value of content has never been ethereal. It has always been directly tied to what owners could 'get' for it, either through advertisers or subscribers. For content to have a value, it could never be free. Its position as royalty depended on that.

Content is rapidly being devalued."

BoSacks Speaks Out

Okay, before I make my comments, I wanted to include BoSacks comments on this topic: More...

Almost every company in the world has some kind of customized magazine or newsletter. According to the Custom Publishing Council, there are more than 100,000 custom publications in the United States alone. Sadly, many companies don't leverage their custom magazine to the fullest extent, while most don't understand the distribution options available.

Especially in these tougher economic times, custom magazines, along with all marketing, is going to be even more scrutinized, so it's important to leverage everything you can out of the content. If your magazine content is truly valuable, make sure it's not being wasted by just delivering it in print and losing it forever (believe it or not, many companies and associations do that). More...

I have been hesitant to push this concept too much, but the evidence is just too vast to ignore anymore.  Those of you who are readers of this blog know that I've been talking about the push into content marketing from traditional media for years.

It's not like that's any big revelation.  We've been seeing traditional print and now even online display revenues take a beating at media companies. Layoffs and restructuring abound (even at Gawker and MySpace). Technology and consumer behavior has changed the landscape entirely and a new business model has emerged.

But, until this point, it has been happening slowly.  The 20% of traditional media spending that was chopped off after the 2001-2003 recession never came back, but it did stabilize, where we were seeing flat spending across the board in most industries. More...

I had the pleasure of working at my brother's (Tony Pulizzi) gig last night at the Winchester in Lakewood, Ohio. Tony opened last night for Alan Holdsworth, one of the most prominent guitarists of the last 50 years (Musician Magazine voted Holdsworth one of the top 100 greatest guitarists of all time).

The Tony Pulizzi Trio (Tony on guitar and vocals, Walter Barnes Jr. on bass and Elijah Gilmore on Drums) have been growing in exposure by opening for bands like Holdsworth and Spyro Gyra (Elijah and Tony pictured to the right). One reason is their use of content marketing.

A band makes money on a show through what they receive as a percentage of the gate or flat fee, in addition to what product they can sell at the event. More...