A stel­lar essay from Frank Chimero on con­tent (as told through the metaphor of watery soup).

You ever order soup at a restau­rant and get a bowl that’s mostly broth?

The prob­lem is the reg­is­ter at the restau­rant is four-hundred bucks under what it was the day before, and every­one is run­ning around scream­ing “No one wants to buy our soup!” Then they start look­ing for dif­fer­ent ways to dis­trib­ute the soup. Do they buy new ladles? Would peo­ple like it if the ladles were fancier? “Let’s buy new bowls. People would enjoy the new bowls,” they say. Customers could choose the bowl that best fits their per­son­al­ity, or how they’re feel­ing that day, or whether they’re hav­ing the soup for lunch or for dinner.

Pretty fun to sub­sti­tute “news” for “soup” through­out the post. Reminded me of an ear­lier arti­cle about news sys­tems try­ing to pass off watery broth.