Content Curator New Job Title

Posted on | November 2, 2010 | No Comments

I don’t know how often you read Robin Good but there is no question if you are into tech applications and dare I say New Media, even convergence/divergence, this is a must read blog.

Yes we need more local coverage of ideas and issues, maybe that means we need more journalists.

But I dare say the journalist of yesterday and the journalist of today are 2 very different people.

The tools are different, the distribution is changing, the context has changed and the associations and links in the news are new!

And smoking and swearing in public are almost totally outlawed!

The journalist of yesterday is a content curator today!

Yes our curators will write and disseminate original work product.

But the information curator of today will also gather, sort and contextualize the vast amount of information for others!

Here is a piece of the Robin Good post on the idea of media curators today.

What is content curation and why is it so important for the future of web content publishers? The content curator is the next emerging disruptive role in the content creation and distribution chain. In a world submerged by a flood of information, content curators may provide in the coming months and years a new, tremendously valuable service to anyone looking for quality information online: a personalized, qualified selection of the best and most relevant content and resources on a very specific topic or theme.

Photo credit: Luna Vandoorne Vallejo

In other words, a content curator is someone “who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online“. The most important component of this job is the word “continually.”In the real-time world of the Internet, this is critical.

This is how marketing expert Rohit Bhargava defines what he thinks is one of the key emerging online editorial roles of the future.

What the web needs to become even more useful and meaningful again (like in the old times, where only few websites existed) is a specialized middle layer of editors that gather, filter and distribute relevant information on specific niches of interest.

I have written and discussed at length of something very similar
since 2004, when I started writing about the concept of newsradars and newsmastering:

[...] the emerging newsmaster, is not just like the typical passionate Twitterer who shares all kinds of valuable information she finds. Her value, as I see it, emerges from focusing only on one, very specific topic, and acting as an always-on radar. Its unique value is not just in the ability to capture everything being said, written and published on a specific topic, but very much into her ability to filter, select and editorially curate (titling, sequencing, grouping, commenting, etc.) the flow of information she manages.

Mastering how to create niche-targeted compilations of content is indeed one of the key lifesaving strategies that wise-minded online publishers can adopt to offer greater value, even at a price, to those interested in it.

In a world where attention has become so scarce to become as valuable as currency, and where quality information on a specific topic requires ever more time and attention to be found, the value that could provide those who have the ability to organize, select, compile and edit the most valuable information on anyone topic is incommensurable.

Link: http://www.masternewmedia.org/content-curation-why-is-the-content-curator-the-key-emerging-online-editorial-role-of-the-future/#ixzz147mbYel7

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