Writing: Art, Craft - or Relic of the Past?

Professional writers don't have it particularly easy in this day and age: Either the newspaper is taken away from under their keyboards because the advertising-financed models no longer apply, or a robot takes their job away because its text is also quite good, but the robowriter never tires and spits out texts 24/7. How can one still position oneself there?

The death of journalism

). In Switzerland, that would be the case in about 7 years. Smaller titles such as the Ticino Giornale del Popolo it just catches on a little beforehand. American newspapers were the first to die. Probably because advertising money in America has migrated to online media earlier than in other countries. The pattern is quite clear; there are no rescue measures in sight. Unless a patron like Jeff Bezos buys a publication like the Washington Post. Under his wing, the paper is even said to be commercially successful!

Writing as art is breadless art

So the first thing I state is: Writing understood as art, is breadless art. High-quality springs and the otherwise demanding will have to think about how they want to make ends meet commercially. Especially in the small Swiss market.

The craft as an option?!

So then there remains the option of craft. Honest and good craftsmanship has survived many revolutions because text is and remains a good and efficient means of communication. Boom of video platforms or not.

So one or the other could find his or her salvation in the craft niche. So we are talking about well-performing advertising copywriters, eloquent PR copywriters, well concealing press copywriters, emotionally gripping storytellers or search engine optimizing product copywriters.

Branded in journalism-lingo as the "dark side," because it's less about investigative journalism than copy for clients.

It's hardly possible without machine support any more

But at least copywriters can still earn an income here with their passion. Passion, however, that they have to "share" with machines, because without machine support it is becoming increasingly difficult these days to be found with one's texts, e.g. via search engines.

As an example, I will use the "Content Experience" of the German company Searchmetrics: Via structured content briefings from Google hit lists, the author has a powerful wealth of knowledge at his disposal, which "only" needs to be converted into a suitable text.

For example, if I wanted to write an article about the "end of journalism," the content experience would indicate that I should probably read the book "Lückenpresse" by Ulrich Teusch.

written.So the second thing I state is: There is still a future for writers in the craft! from Stuttgart. The latter alone produces 1 million texts per day...

In the long term ... gloomy prospects!

Here is a price example of the video subtitle service from Wistia.com. They offer computer generated subtitles for 25 centimes per minute. Within minutes logically. If you want 99% quality, let a human writer do it. He then costs CHF 2.50 and delivers within four working days. Those who need the subtitles within one working day pay CHF 4.00 per minute. Or 16 times more than for the machine. For a 2-minute video, that would be CHF 8. From this you still have to deduct the acquisition costs for the order as well as the administrative effort for invoicing. And the costs for the office infrastructure.Good night... are becoming more and more powerful, so that new texts are also created there en masse in an automated way. . As an aspiring writer, this is not the future I want. However, I don't earn my bread and butter by writing. Or how much would you have paid to read this article? Exactly.Further reading:News came up with the telegraph and is no longer contemporary https://medium.com/s/story/face-it-you-just-dont-care-about-the-news-anymore-e34649174166