Are Old-Media Skills Relevant to Steemit?

Yes. Move along now.

Oh, OK, I’ll expand. A version of this question popped up in discussion a couple of days ago. I thought I’d jot down a few thoughts to see if I could justify my knee-jerk response.

Adapt to survive

It’s not like “old” media were some monolith of iron conformity. As you worked your way around different editors and various publications – especially if you were freelancing – you continually adapted to changing demands, expectations, idiosyncrasies. My opening gambit in this piece is a nod to an old editor who particularly hated question-form headlines. I would never have dared write like that for him, but other editors didn’t give a monkey’s about such matters. Instead, they might have ranted, ‘Give me an active verb!’ Which I would gladly provide, while obviously obeying the House Style Guide that decreed that No Sentence Could Begin with a Conjunction.

Social media cares still less, and so while I actually tend to agree that question-form headlines are for the birds, today I’m temporarily liberating myself from conformity to my own opinion.

I can’t see that the skills of adaptability that were so essential in the offline world are any less relevant to this or that online environment. As I’ve proposed elsewhere, the Whales on here can be compared to editors, and so a writer solely concerned with climbing the greasy pole of Steemit success may be well advised to take a strictly old-fashioned approach: study what a given Whale/editor likes; write something that panders to his/her interests and prejudices; then present it when there’s a good chance they might pay attention.

Alternatively, there’s the approach of the newsroom kiss-ass, who awaits pronouncements from the important personage they’ve decided to hitch their star to, then agrees with them. As I understand it, the Steemit system is specially designed to reward this sort of behaviour, allotting superior value to early comment on popular posts. Nothing hard to understand for old-timers there.

Mastery of communication is the core skill

It’s easy to lose sight of this when you see semi-literate waffle upvoted into the stratosphere, but the frequent success of patent rubbish online is not something we should be a) surprised at or b) upset about. It’s merely the online environment holding up a mirror to the real world.

Does the success of MacDonald’s mean that their burger-making techniques represent the Gold Standard that all chefs should aspire to?

The basic skills of written communication have not been altered by the internet or by any particular online platform. Writing remains a skill to be honed by practice and reference to peer judgement. Your references can go out of date and that may be what leaves some feeling ‘irrelevant’. But the underlying skills should always be there, ready to be polished and brought back up to date. Skills have enduring value; opinions and celebrity are just so much trash, yet worth so many Steem Dollars. Just like the real world.