I came across the phrase meta-reading today in a post by Judith Townsend on journalism.co.uk. It reports on comments made by Turi Munthe, CEO and founder of the citizen journalism site, Demotix, about how the ‘younger’ generation consumes news content:
“There is a generational split, but not in the way everyone imagines. It’s much more recent than that. They [the younger generation] are getting the Twitter feeds, and the blog posts, and the Facebook messaging and the free papers, and everything else, and are very happy with it. Much more happy with it than I am. Essentially, they process information differently. It’s a ‘meta-reading’. It’s not about individual brands.”
This very much echos comments I have made about the future of news and ‘big-media’. I personally worry less online about who I am getting content from, if the content is good and/or (and here is the interesting part) if the content has been recommended to me by a friend (e.g. socially). Its the content that matters not the creator/owner and the distribution model moves from big media to social media.