A recent blog post by agent provocateur Penelope Trunk is headlined "The Internet Has Created a Generation of Great Writers."
Says Trunk: "The best writers in the history of the world are graduating from college, right now."
She points to Stanford University research that shows today's students are writing much more than previous generations, and in a profoundly different way. Consider these findings:
- An amazing 62 percent of student writing is outside of school. That's a giant paradigm shift from the pre-Internet age, when almost all writing was for the classroom.
- Not only are students writing more, they're writing things they truly care about and want others to read.
- And they're writing in a lively, competitive and very public marketplace (text messaging, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) that hones their rhetorical skills and teaches them how to influence their audience.
Trunk's loveably brazen conclusion: "So everyone can just shut up about how no one can write anymore."
My further conclusion, drawn from her insightful observations, is that internal communication is going to be part of this giant paradigm shift. Companies that put the policies and tools in place that allow employees to use their powerful new communication skills at work will ride this wave to a more humane and productive workplace -- and a more profitable business model that builds value through collaboration and community-building.
Imagine that. In the future, the most successful companies will be the ones who attract the best writers.
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