Abstract journalism
December 17, 2009 3 Comments
A while ago I posted this twitpic of a rough diagram I crudely drew in a free online paint program.
I didn’t get any comment back at the time, but as people do with charts, feel I now need to labour the point.
What a good journalist can do is take all ‘matter‘ within their beat, and interpret and communicate it succinctly to an audience. Sounds simple, but it can be bloody hard and quite scientific. Without the journalist, you have all the universe at your disposal but no tool to manage it. Yes, I may be overestimating their role but am I talking about ‘good’ journalists here. Or as they’ve started to be known online as – ‘content curators‘.
BTW, it’s always worth checking out the definition of the word ‘zeitgeist’ to get further comprehension – see here.
Thoughts? Let’s kick off a discussion (someone please leave a charity comment now).
About Kate Kendall
Yes. Love your graph and love this topic.
First started thinking about this after listening to a Gary Vaynerchuk talk about information D.J’s.
There’s so much content available – how do you find a reliable way to filter it?
Sure there is search, directories and social networks to help but there’s definitely a need to focus on specific themes with person opinion – to distil it all and present the best info.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while – I started off with a weekly email wrap up of “good” online business. I’ve taken this further with daily updates on womeninbusiness.com.au.
Definitely an area to watch and fun to be involved in.
I actually had a dream this illustration was brilliant. Sound crazy? anyway I tweeted it but you may have missed it. Looking at it now it even reflects the direction well. I measure intelligence by ‘the filter’. It is without a doubt a strange and complex world we live in. I wonder what would happen if you turned it upside down.
ps I hope you don’t mind me commenting on ur blog.
Brodaigh – I’ve been loving your comments! And thank you for spending some time even bothering to visit me. Last night, I was feeling a bit blah and read your message on my happiness post and it pumped me up, so every comment is appreciated!
I’m also extremely flattered that you (or the dream you!) thought the illustration was brilliant. I could talk for hours about it…
I like your idea of turning it upside down – in fact, it works quite well. If you want to create or investigate a story (or ‘the zeitgeist’), you can go out and research the leads to make it happen. The only problem with the reverse funnel is that there might be a risk of missing some info that is critical to the story. Of course, the extreme of this is the current-affair-style TV journalism!