Creating content

By Chandler Walter, Editor-in-Chief

There’s something pretty cool about how I can just sit here, jamming my fingers into this electronic board, and somehow you’re sitting there completely understanding what I’m saying.

Don’t worry, this isn’t another long-winded spiel about how absolutely rad writing is, but it may come dangerously close.

Bear with me, as always.

Our feature this week is all about content creation, which, by its sheer name, acts a large umbrella term. Honestly, content could be anything: Shows, plays, TV shows, YouTube videos, even Lettitors in which Editor-in-Chiefs name a bunch of content types in a half-assed ploy to somehow make word count on production night.

All of those wonderful things.

It’s a great idea, on the surface. Make things that make people happy. Make things that give people something to be entertained by. Or, on the flip side: Create something that educates. And for a long time, the people who did that were the people who did that, it was all the content that there was, and that was that.

Flash forward maybe 30 years to present day, and it has become all messed up.

You don’t need a publisher to write a novel and send it out into the void anymore, hell, you don’t even need a fancy pea coat and pipe to be a writer these days. All you need are two thumbs, a working smartphone (do we even call them smartphones anymore? Can we consider iPhones as just “phones” and leave it at that, already?), and, at most, 140-characters of something to qualify in the ranks of “content creators.”

Video creation, while a little trickier, has exploded with would-be YouTube stars, SnapChat story-tellers, and Instagram celebrities.

So the question then becomes: If everyone is making some form of content, how do we know what is any good?

Well, obviously you just go ahead and pick up the newest issue of Douglas College’s the Other Press, flip on over to the first page, and, realizing that there aren’t any gifs and only one picture (?!), go back to scrolling on your phone to find something much more entertaining there.

I mean, I hope not, but that choice is entirely up to you.

I create content for a living (and no, not solely at the Other Press, I have a nine to five elsewhere when I’m not leading this band of merry writers) and the competition is fierce; even for a well-known and far-reaching publication.

Between the websites, blogs, tweets, and made-of-actual-paper newspapers, there’s more words than ever to grab those valuable eyeballs.

Here at the OP, we’re just one voice among the rest—and a relatively quiet one that that—but all there really is left to do amid all this chaos is just keep on speaking.

And, as always, we appreciate you lending the ear.