Can your CMS adversely affect writing quality?

Dave Perks writes a thoughtful post this week on the New City Media blog called Writing versus Content Managing in which he wonders if content management has affected overall writing quality. In his definition of a CMS, Perks clearly understands its purpose as a content distribution mechanism, yet he worries that it's an unguarded arbiter that has lead to sloppy writing. He writes:

"Simply put, content management is all about efficiently harvesting information from multiple sources and channeling it to the right audience at the right location. Writing is about communicating effectively. Unfortunately, what one person considers great writing may be the exact opposite. But with only a content manager as the guardian of copy, this error in judgment is not likely to be caught."

He goes on to argue that this content manager, the person at the helm of the content management system is akin to the editor at a newspaper. He says this role typically falls to someone in Marketing or IT and worries that this person lacks the proper training to make decisions on content quality.

While I agree there can be a similar set of roles between the offline publishing model and content management, I don't necessarily equate the person in charge of the CMS technolgy as the editor, any more than the guy who was in charge of the printing press (and he wasn't responsible for content, only final output). As I wrote in How Do You Explain Complex Technology to Non-techncial People [1], there are a similar set of roles, and a good CMS has the tools in place to ensure quality control.

The quality of the writing--good or bad--is no more or less likely whether you are producing the final copy on a website using a content management system or on a printing press. It's up to the writer to produce decent copy and it's up to the company distributing the copy to decide how much oversight that writer needs.

For more information:
- see the entire post [2] from Perks