I used to define “ghost writer” as someone who creates written material (memoir, novel, web content, articles, etc.) for a client basically from scratch. This is popular lingo for the idea that the client proposes and the ghost writer disposes. The client supplies the core idea, rough outline, or even just notes; the ghost writer uses any of these to compose an original text.

This used to be the broadest definition of ghost writing I could come up with that made any sense to me back in the early 1980s, when I first embarked on this ever-expanding career.

Today, I’m not sure it’s broad enough anymore. Is all ghost writing necessarily “from scratch”?

So much has happened since the eighties. I won’t list the great transformations that have taken place in information technology (IT). They’ve been the central motor of change in the way we communicate through the written word, to be sure. The medium indeed is and has transformed the message, to go by Marshall McLuhan’s great insight.

The ancient Greek philosophers considered man’s defining characteristic to be his ability to talk. Perhaps we should add another unique characteristic: We are equally the only earthly creatures to let our fellow human beings communicate on our behalf. (I love this expanded ghostwriting definition, don’t you?) This has come to define the new medium.

In another sense it has always been this way, I know, but never to the extent we witness today. We churn out information–useful, redundant, false, isolated, etc., every type imaginable–with unprecedented efficiency. So much so that we can do away with the very author of an idea. And the readers need not all be human. They could be machines too.

So, where does this fragmentation of modern communication leave the ghost writer?

Does what he or she creates necessarily have to be new and original? Do we really write “from scratch”–re: original material?

The answer is “not necessarily” to both questions.

With respect to the first, by “not necessarily original” I don’t mean to imply that plagiarism is fine. It’s not! At the same time, the gulf between author and writer has so widened that it has allowed ghost writers to evolve a new multi-purpose activity on the Web where written content may not be intended only to elevate or inform the intellect. And even when it is, the active participation of the author is not essential, as I said.

This not necessarily bad news. Modern propaganda, which originated mainly in World War II, can be used for good or evil designs. Its goal is both to inform and to mold opinion. If the premises or data are false, then obviously the messenger’s motive is suspect. If they are sound, then maybe the message holds significance–or maybe not. Advertising and marketing behave like this.

In the age of the Internet, crafting written texts has added “search engine optimization” (SEO) to information dissemination. What does this make of writing if not more securely a means to an end, which end supercedes the very content of the message. The functionality of “knowledge,” if we can call this form of information by that name, has become far more prominent than at any time in history.

Ghost writing has kept up with this trend by developing areas of writing where even the content of the message is secondary. Does this mean that the content is meaningless?

Think of marketing. Its prime purpose is to attract markets. Texts written for the purpose of web ranking have a similar function. Like marketing, they cannot serve the client on behalf of which the ghost writing writes by providing content that is false, redundant or plain inconsistent. It may well draw an audience, but a very skeptical, angered one.

The learning curve of Internet users is very steep. I learned quickly to dismiss three-quarters of information pieces found on the Web because they fail to do what they purport: inform me even at the most basic level.

The best ghost writers are clearly experts who craft their texts with a mind to inform and to reach as well as to mold. Put simply, they are effective communicators.

This reality will not change no matter how many transformations we experience in communications.

By Anthony F. Shaker, PhD