This isn’t curation.

It’s pure and simple editing and facts-checking.

I disagree.  Avoiding errors internally involves fact-checking.  Evaluating the content others generate directs readers and adds value - that’s the curation I am talking about.

Anyone can repeat what Sarah Palin said.  It takes effort and adds value to evaluate its accuracy and establish relevance.

Disagree, if you choose, but ...

The specific actions you list are not curatorial in nature; they are editorial. What you are doing is the appropriation of language for the use of a buzzword in an effort to differentiate yourself from the millions of other blogs out there vying for attention and commercial sponsorship.

Avoiding errors “internally” is editorial; evaluating content others generate is no different aside from the focus. You fail to remember that editing ALSO adds value by refinement AND fact-checking of external “content”...copy-editing includes this activity.

You’ve said nothing to indicate any understanding of what a curatorial function is. All you done is reiterate some of the editorial function, albeit filtered through a Web 2.0 adspeak lens.

“Curation” entails a guardianship or stewardship of things; the “value” added is that through this stewardship, the “things” are protected, maintained, and not lost. What you describe here does none of this.

It takes effort to edit ... show the “editors” some respect.

And I hope, in your “Curatorial” activities you catch the typo…oops! That’s editorial, too! Ah, value-added!

I’ve written elsewhere about the evolving role of editors, who (in an era of content scarcity) had served as gatekeepers - deciding what will be published.  With content now widely available, writers and editors need to be equally concerned with how content is discovered.

To me, that means writers and editors have to understand content consumption from the readers’ perspective.  That’s the premise behind the last two paragraphs of my original post.

I understand that you don’t think “curation” is the right word to use here, and I’ll give some more thought to what I mean here.  My primary argument is one you seem to agree with: it’s critical for content providers to add value (and articulate that value) in the current environment.

I don’t understand the tone of your response, though.  Imputing motive where none exists doesn’t help your argument.

I’ve written several posts about curation, the first dating back more than a year (click on the term in the tag cloud).  Feel free to take issue with the use of the term, as you have here.

I’ve fixed the typo in your second comment.

There is no imputation: you have fallen prey to the misuse of the terms “curator, curate, curation, etc.,” in the same manner that every blogger out there misusing it has. The term is just another victim of an ongoing campaign to develop new buzz and language about behaviors that are not necessarily unique to the “web 2.0” environment. The fact that you started a year ago only means that, unlike some, you are not late to the party (I nearly said “feeding frenzy”). BTW, I’ve been talking about this and the misuse of the term “archives” for even longer than the past year…

Editorial responsibility IS evolving (or had better be!) and it was never simply serving as gatekeepers: they have, and continue to have, responsibility for the actions that you are ascribing as “curatorial”.

I simply fail to see how your last two paragraphs make the case that a new term is needed (and certainly not bending the term “curation” to fit it). If anything, I see this all as a failure of Jour/Comm programs failing to teach the kind of journalism that print once had, one in which there were actually writers trying to go beyond just passing the news along (your phrase). That’s not to say that things were any better then; there seems to be as much a dearth of engaged writing and reporting now (with all that new content available!) as there was then, if not more simply because there are people ostensibly “reporting” on things (which I construe to be part of the point you’re making…but I could be wrong).

The need to draw attention to overdue change is laudable…I just think that this misuse of the term does nothing to truly further the cause.

Since you started off talking about Meet The Press, I would submit that the host is NOT a reporter in any real sense of the word and may, in fact have a point about not vetting his guests’ comments (N.B. I’m NOT defending that position!). But then my sense of most so-called news events/broadcasts is that they fall somewhere between thinly-veiled propaganda and surrealist theater, and that such hosts as we see are simply “readers” or actors and really exercise no editorial function that truly “adds value.” As for AP’s failure to “close the loop”, well, again ... just plain sloppy? Lazy? Too much trouble? There’s certainly an issue of providing context to the statements and AP has done nothing to assist. But I’ve reached the point where I’m not counting on AP to do much beyond giving me the body count; I’ll take the initiative on my own to find out more about a situation or event.

So maybe it really does all come down to complacency or laziness or “I just can’t be bothered.”