One of the traditional markers of being a thought leader is being quoted in an article in a high-profile publication, providing commentary and context to the story.  In the current issue of The Atlantic, however, Michael Kinsley sounds the death knell for this particular type of reporter-source relationship. In Kinsley’s view, this convention isn’t much more than the reporter finding a third party whose views are a proxy for the reporter’s own. The expert rarely says anything the reader doesn’t already know, and the task of identifying him or her often takes up more text than the quote itself.  This is exactly the sort of inefficiency, Kinsley says, that the mainstream media has to shed if it is going to stay relevant.

For those needing to establish or maintain their standing as thought leaders in their fields, Kinsley’s piece shows how old strategies can no longer be relied upon. In fact, the ground is shifting even more than he lets on. The cachet of being quoted in, say, The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal is a function of how much cachet those publications have. While there is no doubt that they are still weighty orbs in the media universe, the democratization of communication means that they are no longer the dominating monoliths they once were. And the decentralization that has affected the media side of the equation has occurred among subject-matter experts as well. Kinsley takes a Times reporter to task for devoting 56 words in a story on banker pay to commentary from Jesse M. Brill, the chairman of CompensationStandards.com.  Kinsley is a bit unfair to Brill—“this person I have never heard of,” sounding as if the only people qualified to publically opine on any topic are people he has heard of—but the barb does underscore the fact that that the opinion marketplace is more crowded than ever before.

The net effect of these developments is to raise the requirements for those seeking a role in shaping public dialogue.  It’s no longer enough (as if it were ever simple) to cultivate relationships with key reporters at top media outlets and to provide them with pithy analysis to complex stories before deadline—and in any event those opportunities will become rarer and rarer. Instead, thought leadership will require something that is significantly more difficult: the start-to-finish development of ideas into genuinely new insights that command the attention of a target audience that has a lot to choose from. In other words, it will be less about commenting on the news (which is often the weak brew Kinsley makes it out to be) than on providing real conceptual tools that allow your audience to better understand the world they are working in. And the people who can do that deserve all the ink they get.