First Draft by Tim Porter

Morph Me an Editor, Please

No one needs an editor. Reporters don’t. Bloggers don’t. Even other editors don’t. But last night I realized why I want an editor.

I was too busy yesterday to keep up with all the intellectual activity at Mediamorphosis, an API Media Center conference underway in San Diego with a lot of smart people talking about, well, media, so last night I went to the conference blog to catch up and in moments was overwhelmed by all the posts, comments and back channel chatter.

I scanned the page, scrolled, scanned again – looking for some kind of summary of the conference and the many conversations taking place. There wasn’t one. It was late and I moved on, thinking I’d get to it this morning.

Then it occurred to me: I wanted a story. I wanted someone to take all the day’s events, filter them, order them and compile them in a format I could scan quickly and then go deeper into if something grabbed my interest.

Isn’t that someone an editor?

In the world of “we media” where every citizen is a publisher, how do we citizen publishers keep up with all the other citizens who are publishing? That’s a role journalists fulfill now, observing others for us.

I’m not saying bloggers themselves should be edited (although feedback from readers is participatory editing) – but I think I’d like someone to edit the blogosphere for me.

Anyone want to start a “we-news” service?

UPDATE: JD Lasica responds that "last year Rusty Foster (founder of Kuro5hin), Matt Haughey (founder of Metafilter and proprietor of the PVR blog) and I were talking about starting a participatory news service, but got sidetracked by other projects." Save me a seat on the rim, JD.

Posted by Tim Porter at March 12, 2004 08:15 AM