Master Curators

I enjoy sharing with my Facebook friends and Twitter followers noteworthy items culled from the voluminous number that incessantly cross the screens of my iMac, MacBook and BB. In fact, the act of curation in and of itself has become a contentious topic in the context of assessing editors’ changing roles in journalism’s new digital order.

One British blogger had his fill of the debate with his post titled “Let’s Stop this ‘Curation is King’ Crap Right Now” in which he wrote:

“Yes, curation is an important part of how information is disseminated online, but in a networked environment curation doesn’t belong to us. It belongs to the behaviour of a million internet users measured by an algorithm, and to the six degrees of separation in our social networks. We’re in there somewhere, like an Indian traffic policeman, but let’s once again not conflate the act with the platform.”

I don’t intend to feed the debate on whether curation is the new must-have skill set for editorial decisionmakers. After all, journalists have always made decisions on what merits sharing with their readers, viewers and listeners. It’s when we’re talking about aggregating and sharing other peoples’ work that the debate can get surly.

Most of the posts and tweets I link-to or re-tweet tend to originate from the carefully curated list of people I follow on Twitter. For example, on Fridays I embed in this space a handful of notable videos discovered mostly via my Twitterstream during the previous week. In fact, Twitter is among the biggest driver of visits to YouTube.

But I want to get back to curation, and share some of my favorite content curators if you happen to work in the PR, media, technology or marketing space. They include:

Media ReDEFined’s Jason Hirschorn
  • Jason Hirschorn’s Media ReDEFined, run by the former co-CEO of MySpace, Media ReDEFined is a daily compendium of coverage (weekends too) that captures the latest news in the media, entertainment and technology space, with a digital flair. (Follow via Twitter, email or elsewhere).
  • Thomas Power, the chairman of UK-based Ecademy who keeps his finger on the pulse of the latest machinations in the worlds of social media and marketing. (via Twitter)
  • Mediagazer, a relative newcomer to the media content aggregation scene, Mediagazer aspires to capture and share all things media. (via Twitter and the Web.)
  • Mediaite, the brainchild of NBC legal analyst and former MSNBC GM Dan Abrams, this year-old site is chock full of original content from the likes of respected media watchers Rachel Sklar, Glynnis MacNicol and others, but also features links to others’ media-centric content. (Via Twitter and the web.)
  • Mediaite’s Dan Abrams
  • Huffington Post – What list of content aggregators would be complete without the world’s most visited weblog? Huffington Post has a number of channels one can follow, including a media channel edited by Daniel Shea. The site is ostensibly a combination of exclusive staff-written content, contributions from outside (unpaid) thought-leaders, and links to coverage from other outlets that its editorial curators deem post-worthy. (via Twitter, the web)
  • Newser – Veteran journalist, Vanity Fair contributor and Rupert Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff started Newser as a means to put his curatorial imprint on the day’s news (and the future of news display). The aggregation of stories, culled exclusively from other sources and his own musings, does not focus on the media or marketing beat per se, but the Newser “grid” usually has some editorial fare of interest to those in the biz. (via Twitter, the web)
Alltop’s Guy Kawasaki
  • Alltop, Guy Kawasaki’s vasty rich (and holy kaw!) well of aggregated content, has something for everybody. One can follow voices in PR or social media, media, marketing or social media, or drill down for greater granularity, e.g., SEO or start-ups. (via Twitter (Guy Kawasaki) or Alltop or the web)
  • Techmeme – For the tech set, there are numerous sites and feed that aggregate content. Perhaps the most prominent is Mediagazer sister sites Techmeme and TechmemeFH (for Firehose). (via twitter, Techmeme and TechmemeFH, and (via Twitter and the web)

Obviously, there are numerous other content curators and aggregators worth including in this rather random round-up. Please send along any that you feel offer value to the PR, media, marketing and social media communities. Thanks.

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