On the future of media - What's the wheat? What's the chaff?

Knowledge@Wharton presents its perspectives on the emerging media landscape: the tussle between user-generated content and 'professional' content in The Experts vs. the Amateurs: A Tug of War over the Future of Media

Whitehouse distinguishes professional content on the basis of its editorial process. "Carefully checked sources and consistent editorial guidelines are key differences between most professional and amateur content," he suggests, while noting that, "Both bring value. The latter brings quickness and a personal viewpoint and the former provides analysis and consistent quality. The world I want to live in includes healthy doses of both categories."

"Where the distinction between amateur and professional content matters is in business models," says Werbach. "For certain kinds of quality content, no blog can match The New York Times, but producing the Times is far more expensive than a blog. If users aren't willing to pay to support the kind of professional journalism the Times provides, something significant will be lost. And that's increasingly happening, because traditional business models for newspapers and TV rely on unrelated advertising revenues to fund quality content. The Internet is disintermediating those dollars."

Bossing around

On ways of being a better boss: 8 ways to be a better boss by Fortune. Very good points.

What is an 'emerging market'?

Not many question commonly used terms in our lexicon. When one does, it does present some useful perspectives. Knowledge@Wharton examines the use of the term 'emerging markets' in When Are Emerging Markets No Longer 'Emerging'?

Antoine W. van Agtmael was deputy director of the capital markets department of the World Bank's International Finance Corp. (IFC) when he coined the phrase "emerging markets" during an investor conference in Thailand in 1981.

Initially, the phrase applied to fast-growing economies in Asia and was used in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As global interest in market-driven economies grew, investors began to look toward Latin America for emerging markets and eventually at countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, China, India and Russia

Emerging economies, he adds, are in places that are changing from a system based on informal relationships to a more formal system with rules that are transparent and apply equally to all participants in the market.

At the same time, some countries seem to have gotten solidly stuck in the emerging markets category. Guillen points to South Korea...

As Shakespeare wrote, "What's in a name?..."

The Millennial generation: Not just corporate careers

Portfolio.com has an interesting article: Escape from Corporate America highlighting the changing priorities of the so-called "Millennial generation" - people in the workforce born after 1980.

Six-figure jobs on Wall Street and elsewhere just aren’t enough for “Millennial” workers, who want their work to have “meaning” too.

...“Stock picking, in a lot of ways, was extremely gratifying, but had its drawbacks. What did we really change in the world, or what did we really contribute?”

Unlike their parents, experts say, this generation is less likely to become “corporate slaves” focused on earning a paycheck and achieving middle-class status.

“I don’t think they loathe their jobs. I think they loathe the demands the job puts on them.” A 2004 Northwestern Mutual survey of 1,700 recent college grads found that 73 percent said how they spend their time on the job is more important than how much money they make, while 70 percent said money is not the best measure of success.

Ah, the quest for fulfillment...