A Faustian Bargain

For the last century, business communication has taken its cue -- and most of its practitioners -- from the world of journalism.

We mention this because there's a relatively new trend in journalism's latest manifestation -- online media -- known as The Slideshow.  Any of us who read newspapers or blogs online have spent a few minutes clicking through something headlined: "15 reasons to worry about..." , " The 10 sexiest...", "25 things you need to know about...",  or "The 10 best places to..."


All of this time wasted/invested has attracted the ultimate compliment in the media world -- advertiser support -- for a simple reason: users like doing it.  Indeed, the Slideshow has emerged as a communications tool uniquely suited to online media consumption. The august Columbia Journalism Review has put its stamp on the Slideshow in an article entitled "A Faustian Bargain" posted this morning on its website.

Quoting Henry Blodget, founder of the prominent blog The Business Insider the article reads:

His sites are havens for slideshows because, according to Blodget, they consider them a story-telling mechanism native to web journalism. “Every new medium develops certain forms of storytelling…ways of conveying information that take advantage of what the medium does well…relative to other media,” Blodget wrote over e-mail. “Good slide shows help increase engagement (time on site, page views), the same way an excellent article helps increase the amount of time a reader spends with a newspaper or magazine. Bad ones don’t help with anything.”


Those of us who are trying to get something across to our teammates or customers have a new tool to work with.