What Are Your Biggest Problems with Digital Publishing as We Know It?

In Discussion by Edward Nawotka

By Edward Nawotka

Last night I watched the debut of HBO’s new Aaron Sorkin-helmed series Newsroom, in which a fictional newscaster goes off script to offer a “human moment” to an audience of Northwestern students and tell it like it is. It’s a traditional Sorkin speech, full of soaring rhetoric that asserts that, no, America isn’t “the greatest country” on Earth, “but could be.” He then goes on to list a series of disheartening stats about America. It was rousing stuff, but lacked — unfortunately — any prescription for how things could change.

In digital publishing, it seems like there’s a constant chorus calling for change. Some, sit on the sidelines and merely kvetch, others have taken matters into their own hands, either going their own way to do their own thing (with varying degrees of success), or else calling for outright change — like the grassroots Publication Standards Project described in today’s feature story.

So here’s your chance to vent. Tell us, as bluntly as you’d like, what are your biggest problems with digital publishing as we know it? And, if you can, a prescription for change.

About the Author

Edward Nawotka

A widely published critic and essayist, Edward Nawotka serves as a speaker, educator and consultant for institutions and businesses involved in the global publishing and content industries. He was also editor-in-chief of Publishing Perspectives since the launch of the publication in 2009 until January 2016.