Last week I attended the Future of Content debate at the British Library, which was hosted by my client Meltwater, in conjunction with the PRCA.

I think it's important to stress they are a client, so that anyone reading this will be able to apply their own critical faculties and decide for themselves the extent to which my opinions may be coloured by commercial considerations.

One of the opening statements in the keynote speech from Richard Sambrook, the Chief Content Officer of Edelman, was that he dislikes the word content. This was definitely a good starting point, despite the unavoidable irony, as he went on to explore the notion of what content is - stories, by and large, in a variety of formats - and explained the word content, in his opinion, carries too much implied commoditisation.

I have a lot of sympathy with that point of view.  Content… it's only a couple of rungs up the semantic ladder from stuff, if you ask me.  And as someone who used to earn his way in the world as a writer and journalist, and for whom the written word is still an important part of everyday working life, the further my outpourings are from words such as stuff (and even content) the better.

But the issue of commoditisation is at the heart of the debate on the future of not only content but the publishing sector at large.  How do commercial organisations make money in a sustainable manner from the content their publications create?

The game has changed.  Revenue from cover prices and display advertising has declined markedly with the shift to an increasingly online world.

Much of the debate at the British Library surrounded the ongoing disagreements between Meltwater and the Newspaper Licensing Agency which is a body owned by some of the UK's largest newspaper publishers to administer licensing agreements and collect fees for accessing and copying newspaper articles.  The matter has been before the High Court, is due to be heard in the Court of Appeal later this month, and is scheduled review by the UK Copyright Tribunal too.

Despite how polarised these two organisations' points of view there is a not insignificant point of convergence; everyone benefits from a vibrant, sustainable and commercially viable free press.  Ensuring publishers are able to profit from the content they publish is at the heart of this.

Whether you consider yourself to be on the side of licensing, paywalls, freemium models - or any one of the many other approaches publishers are considering - it is hard, especially if you work in the same industry as me, to disagree that somehow these important issues need to be resolved in a way that does not undermine the interests of any of the parties concerned.

It would also be hard to argue that the publishing industry has changed beyond all recognition in the wake of the mass adoption of digital content consumption.  That change, it has been argued, is no less significant than the invention of the printing press itself.

Change is inevitable in business.  Less so where human nature is concerned.  The future of content will be one that has to revolve around the desires of readers to have that content delivered to them in a way that suits their needs and gives them value.  Without that value, convincing anyone to pay will be an increasingly uphill struggle.

Sean