Gladwell .v. Anderson - A Battle for Free-dom

Free: Chris Anderson

Some of you may be aware of that little publicised facts that newspaper readership is on the decline, people are sharing music without paying for it and the movie industry is being crippled by illegal downloads…

Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief at Wired UK’s new book Free: The Future of A Radical Price looks at the idea of how consumers are expecting more and more of their content for free, and with advertising spend on the way down the road to ruin, the future is uncertain for much of our mainstream media.

Some of you may be more familiar with the works of Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point  and Blink, he’s recently entered the ring with his own opinions, and the digital battle for the answer is well and truly on.

This is an issue that will inevitably effect us all, but will put PR in an exclusively pertinent place for our clients if the model of free content that Anderson is pushing comes out on top - the idea that we earn media placement rather than buy it has never been so well positioned in this new (to use Anderson’s words) freeconomy.

Take a look at Antonia Senior’s piece in The Times for some more info… http://bit.ly/4Oq2H

Let the battle commence!