Brain on Digital

There’s a gap as big as the grand canyon between regurgitated aggregation and quality curation.

Unfortunately, the content marketing bandwagon is not as discriminating.

At least once a week I stumble across a tool that promises me that a robot – or an algorithm – can do what a journalist does only better.

It’s all very John Henry versus the railroad.

Except in the world of journalism. I’m still betting on John Henry in the long-run.

As brands rush to publish content that will build their reputation (among their audience, in social media, in search engines and in the cultural zeitgeist) they, as we humans ironically tend to do, are looking for shortcuts.

Content is king? Great. Let me manufacture some for my audience.

Distribution is queen? Sweet. I’ll just repost this repost of a repost.

Engagement is everything? Nice. Hold on for a second while I rapid-fire burst these headlines a robot found for me at my audience.

They’re going to love it, right?

No. I think it’s more like they’re going to mark it as proverbial spam in their mental inbox.

Why? Because quality content is something you can’t fake. You’re not hawking designer handbag knockoffs, you’re providing a high-end service. Journalism, in its purest form takes a look at the whole world of events and figures out what is happening, why it’s happening, and why it matters to you.

Think of journalism as the ultimate bullshit filter. Great journalists have two things mastered: the science of understanding things and the art of explaining things.

And with that in mind, I’m going to attempt to redefine curation in a way that doesn’t mean regurgitation.

Here’s how I define curation (and by omission define regurgitated garbage): [Read more...]