News flash: Content farms and factories continue their explosive growth, while traditional publishers and newspapers free fall.

Machines and godless industrialists are running amok, polluting the Web with low rent content. Oh the humanity! Where will we find a little human redemption in this scourge of machine generated content?

Why, “News For You!” say some industrialists. Farms and factories may find redemption by adding social and personalization enhancements. Recently Google News, that granddaddy of content factories, unveiled its most significant overhaul since its launch in 2002. Features such as a personal news stream, where consumers can edit categories and content sources to suit their needs, bring that human touch to machine automation.

Google News: News for you

“We’ll save you!” say some experts. Farms and factories may redeem themselves through partnerships with legitimate organizations. Begrudgingly, traditional news organizations are partnering with farms like Demand Media, AOL Seed, and the Examiner.com. Even Google News is bringing in a select group of human editors as partners.

While all interesting developments, this reporter remains unconvinced. Such discussions and industry moves are suspiciously old school, overwhelmingly focused on the quality of content produced. Content farms and factories are often written off as sub-human attempts at journalism. It echoes earlier criticisms of blogging and citizen journalism.

Then as now, market disruptions cannot be evaluated against old standards. Content farms and factories need a new value assessment, one that has nothing to do with journalistic quality (or the lack thereof). Quality has already grossly overshot the expectations of many consumers, which is precisely why the industry is so ripe for disruption. And however glamorous it may seem to incumbents, most consumers don’t want to edit and curate the news any more than they want to report and write it. This self-absorbed supply-side perspective is leaving traditional journalists ill equipped to adjust to these changes.

Maybe there is a deeper, more pervasive humanity supporting the rise of content farms and factories. Consumers want content that is supportive of their immediate needs. They want convenience and simplicity, to be treated as markets of one. Content farms and factories succeed in this fine grained segmentation. Any perceived shortcomings in quality are more than overcome by the convenience benefits: content that is more individually task-oriented and crafted to the readers’ unique requirements.

“Create by consuming”, says Primal. Last week, our factory took another step towards our vision of consumer-directed content manufacturing, with the release of Primal Pages. We don’t expect consumers to act like journalists, but we do want to empower them as the ultimate architects of the content they consume. Under our model, consumers direct the automated content manufacturing in real-time — as they’re consuming it — through the topics they specify and their unique click-paths.

Primal Pages: Create content by browsing

By journalistic standards, this may be publishing at its most basic. But that’s the entire point: a drive towards ultimate simplicity and convenience for consumers as consumers.

The sad truth is that most incumbents are failing to examine the true humanity in content farms and factories in the motivations of the consumers. Eric Schmidt, describing the “cultural phenomenon” that is Google, captures it succinctly: “It’s a way in which consumers consume information.”

First and foremost, consumers consume information, preferring the most tailored and convenient information possible.

Posted by Peter Sweeney