Curation

Gabe Rivera has launched a new property, Mediagazer, as another column in his network of vertical content websites.

Mr. Rivera is of course the man behind Techmeme, a website that everyone in the world of technology is familiar with. An aggregation service, it uses a powerful algorithm to harvest news, and then employs a team of human  editors stitch together the pieces to create the most dynamic collection of news stories, headlines, and discussion in the technology space around current topics.

Less known in tech journalism are Techmeme’s sister sites. The company also operates BallBug (Baseball), WeSmirch (celebrity gossip), memeorandum (politics), and now Mediagazer covering the most important news in the media industry.

Talking to Paid Content’s Staci Kramer, Techmeme editor McCarthy said that the four-year time difference between the last vertical launch and Mediagazer was due to work perfecting their model: “We spent the last four years evolving and perfecting our aggregation model and finally did the next vertical when we thought it was mature enough.”

The company sells sponsor slots on its verticals, meaning that each site brings in sufficient revenue to handles its curation and maintenance. In that vein, Mediagazer is launching with four sponsors. All but one are new; Seesmic sponsors Mediagazer and Techmeme. The website is very similar to the look and feel of the other verticals in the network.

And of course, Mediagazer does have those new share buttons that were unveiled last week. Techmeme et al know how important they have become, and the new sharing links at the top of each headline story section give readers the ability to link back to that section on the websites simply. Mediagazer will benefit from this functionality from launch.

Will the website succeed? I can safely say that while researching this story, half my time was spent reading content I that came across on Mediagazer. If that is any indication, we have another Techmeme on our hands.

To many in the industry, Techmeme is hands down the best aggregator of technology news. So it makes sense that they’d try to take their combination of algorithms and editors to other verticals. But they’ve tried in the past, and it hasn’t worked. But that doesn’t mean they’re giving up.

Today, the people behind Techmeme are rolling out Mediagazer, a new site focused on aggregating and serving up all the best media news from around the web. The timing seems perfect given the level of interest surrounding the slow but interesting death of print media. And the interest around exciting new devices like the iPad, which may or may not reinvigorate the industry.

But why chose to focus on media?

“Media news has several things going for it: lots of new coverage every day, lots of interlinking, a variety of subtopics (video, blogs, journalism, newspapers, etc.) and (we hope) a potential audience with interest in several of those subtopics,” Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera tells us.

Rivera has tried in the past to roll the Techmeme idea to other verticals such as celebrity news (WeSmirch), political news (Memeorandum), and even baseball news (Ballbug). All those sites still exist, but none have gotten the level of interest that Techmeme has.

So why will this be different? Aside from the interest in media, this is the first site Rivera has rolled out since switching over to using human editor curation. And actually, Mediagazer will be launched under the control of Megan McCarthy, the first human editor Rivera hired in late 2008. Rivera has since made other hires to round out a full staff that can work around the clock for Techmeme.

Says McCarthy, “Media is tumultuous. Some areas are growing, some shrinking, and there’s no clear path of where things are going. There’s talk about the future of journalism, consolidation of media ownership, bloggers, Twitter, etc. It affects daily life (look at how the Oscars were blacked out in New York City and how many people were touched by that). This is an industry that is filled with such disruption — you need to have a way to clearly view the big picture. Mediagazer does that.“

And a bit more about how it actually works from Mediagazer’s about area:

We gather all the important stories about media and present them to you in a timely, thorough, and organized manner. Our story selection method uses the power of our freakishly smart algorithm combined with direct editorial input from knowledgeable human editors.

We collect every relevant take on an issue and package them together in a comprehensive group of links. That way, you not only get the lead opinion on an issue, but you can easily see all the supporting, opposing, smart, controversial, notable, and previously unseen viewpoints. You get the big picture.

BRAF Installs Ecstasy in Patricia’s Green —

photo by Dave Schumaker

photo by Jamison Wieser

Black Rock Arts Foundation recently installed the sculpture “Ecstasy” by Dan Das Mann and Karen Cusolito at Patricia’s Green in the Hayes Valley neighborhood San Francisco. An opening reception for the installation is planned for Friday, March 19th and the sculpture will be on display through June18th.

First displayed at the Burning Man festival in Nevada in 2008, Ecstasy is one of the eight monumental metal figures of the artists’ masterpiece, Crude Awakening. In Crude Awakening, these eight figures surrounded a 99-foot tall wooden oil derrick in gestures of prostration, worship and exaltation. Alone, Ecstasy embarks on a hopeful journey. Instead of throwing her head back in reverie to the oil derrick, she gazes wistfully into the open sky as she steps forward into an optimistic future, free of dependency on fossil fuel.

Through our Civic Arts Program, BRAF is pleased to further the evolution of this artwork’s message by exposing it to a new audience and community, and to return to the site of Patricia’s Green. In 2005, this location became the site of BRAF’s first public art project.

Working closely with the residents and business owners of the Hayes Valley neighborhood, BRAF established a model of community collaboration towards the curation and installation of public art. These community members continued to work on bringing art into their neighborhood, forming the Hayes Valley Art Coalition. The installation of Ecstasy at Patricia’s Green further affirms the success of this collaboration, and of the model of public, temporary art installation.

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- The Green Man Theme & Poster For Burning Man 2007

The Role Of Curation In Journalism — What should a modern newsroom look like?

Marine Biologist Hopes to Raise Giant Squid In Captivity [Cephalopods] —

Steve O'Shea already holds a world record for rearing squid in a controlled environment. But everybody's got a dream, and O'Shea's is to do the same thing one day with the famously elusive giant squid.

O'Shea is a research director at the Auckland University of Technology, but he's best known as a foremost authority on giant cephalopods. (For a good deal of background on O'Shea and his working methods, see David Grann's excellent New Yorker profile from 2004.) In 2000, O'Shea set a world record for deep-sea squid curation when he took a squid that normally lives almost a thousand feet below sea level and kept it alive in captivity for five months.

A few days ago, O'Shea set out to capture a broad squid in the waters around New Zealand in the hopes of breaking that record. Broad squid, which O'Shea has raised in captivity before, are tricky due to their initially tiny size and a diet that evolves quickly over the first few weeks of life, but O'Shea believes it'll get him "one step closer to the end game" of raising a giant squid.

A word about that goal: though the scientific community has been thinking and writing about giant squid since at least 1850, nobody was even able to get a photograph of a live specimen until 2002, and there's never once been a living giant squid in captivity for any length of time. O'Shea's plan is ambitious, to say the least; you might even say it's audacious, bordering on crazy. But his remarks to reporters earlier this month suggest that he's not going to let that stop him:

I've been told in the past that what I'm trying to do is basically impossible, and I'm told that I'm just going to spend an eternity in trying to prove them wrong... We are proving that the impossible is possible.

Pictured: Steve O'Shea in 1996, with a giant squid specimen.

Jay Rosen points us to an article out of France that takes a stab at presenting what a modern internet-era newsroom should look like. The point that I find most interesting, that helped clarify a few different ideas for me, is that it splits "journalism" into three distinct categories, all of which have a role in the newsroom:

1. Reporters -- who go out and do first person reporting -- creating original stories, not just reposting rewritten wire copy.
2. Columnists -- who "start conversations and give stories another perspective."
3. Curators -- who "'cover' the news by sorting, verifying and editing live everything good existing on the web and in the media. They make link journalism, they make the news more accessible."

Now, this is interesting in a few respects. First, many "reporters" today don't really do what is described as reporting above. That is, they often do try to take wire copy or stories that were written elsewhere, and go through the wasted process of "re-reporting" them just to pretend it's a new and unique story for that publication. In many ways, this is a waste of resources. What would be better is if they actually encouraged #3 above -- let a "curator" handle that sort of news.

Unfortunately, for the most part, newspapers seem to look down on "curating" as if it's some sort of lesser form of journalism, and this is a sticking point that they're going to need to get past if they want to understand how people engage with the news today. These days, everyone is a curator of the news in some fashion: they share news, comment on it, post about it, etc. But they also look to the "pros" to add more value to it as well. But if the traditional press looks down on this function, they won't do a particularly good job of it. It's sometimes tough for a press who used to want itself to be "the final word" on every story to admit that others may have reported it better/faster, as well as the fact that sometimes it's better to involve the community, rather than treating the community as riffraff waiting for the word from the god-like journalists.

If a newsroom were set up with a focus on those three roles (I would add editors as well...), with the understanding that they work together as a team to both bring the most information and community to a particular story, I doubt we'd see newspapers struggling as much as they are today.

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Fourt short links: 16 Feb 2010 —

1. Of Tandoori and Epicuration (JP Rangaswami) -- Curation is the process by which aggregate data is imbued with personalised trust.
2. Siri -- a personal assistant iPhone app, like IWantSandy but with voice recognition.
3. Evaluating the Reasons for Non-use of Cornell University's Institutional Repository -- great lessons for all open data projects. The reward structure established by each discipline largely defines the motivation behind faculty behavior. As eloquently stated by the economist, "While we are going through a digital revolution - in the way we teach and communicate with each other - the reputation of being published in the print journals is still the strongest incentive for motivation." This position was largely echoed by the engineer, who stated "what is holding us to the journal is the promotion procedure. This is about a problem of measurement with how Cornell evaluates my work." That said, there are real risks associated with changing one's practices, especially when one assumes the role of an early innovator. As the communication faculty member summarized, "There has to be a better way than the current system, but I'm not willing to be on the leading edge in using that system." (via JHW)
4. Google Voice Transcriptions Annotated as Poetry -- found art that reminds us that it's hard to wreck a nice beach.

   WHATEVER THIS IS (Caller: My friend Christina)
   
   Hey mister
   it's Christina
   just left you a message and then
   I got your message and realized
   you're stuck out
   
   but I'll try you.
   
   But yeah, just trying to be tomorrow
   (if you get the chance)
   And if you're a few Karen in China the next day
   Council lot more
   eating minnows on the step
   and give me a little
   
   I'll be hanging around then and I am
   well,
   whatever this is.