Read the National Curator: Because curating minds want to know
I remember seeing a comedy skit, probably in the late 1990s or early 2000s, that made fun of the media’s tendency to overload viewers with information. The scene started with a male anchor delivering news, and the screen included a ticker along the bottom, an over-the-shoulder graphic, and some other infographics. The more the anchor talked, the more graphics popped up on the screen. Eventually, the anchor is engaged in a battle for face time to continue delivering his message as he twists and maneuvers around all the graphics that inundate the screen.
Matt Thompson approaches this phenomenon of journalism overload in 10 Questions for Journalists from the Reynolds Journalism Institute. The theme that appears throughout all the questions and emerges as the primary question is this: are journalists informing the public or distracting it? You’ve probably, at one time or another, come across a news website that seems to jump off the computer screen and slap your face. TMI. Have you ever looked at The Huffington Post website? Is it really necessary to use 1,085 point font for a headline?Thompson quotes Clay Shirky: “There’s no such thing as information overload, there is only filter failure,” I raised a concerned brow when I first read that quote, then I let it sink in for a minute. He’s right. It’s up to the news organization to allow viewers to customize their news-hunting experience. People want to take ownership of the media they consume. They should be able to pick and choose the content they see on a website. I personally have become very frustrated searching for a particular news story I heard about the day before on a news website without the ability to eliminate articles that appeared six years prior.
But at the same time, it is the responsibility of the journalist to exercise self control when publishing content. Any news organization that is not confined to the inflexible schedule of broadcasting has the freedom to use as much space and time as possible, but that doesn’t mean they should. “Freed from contraints of time and space, tomorrow’s news cycle should be about advancing our most important stories — reporting new developments, of course, but also exploring different angles and drawing connections.” Isn’t that what we’ve been doing all along?
It’s that freedom to use “time and space” that throws me off. Because of my television news experience, I still force my students to create commercials and PSAs that are exactly :30 seconds or :60 seconds long. I wonder if I should give up the habit because the video will only be seen online where exact time is unnecessary. No. No. If Twitter can get away with limiting us to only 140 characters, I can continue to insist on broadcast-ready content.
“To be clear, my goal is to turn as many newcomers as I can into experts on as many topics as I can, but I think I can only get there by treating the two audiences distinctly and creating a continuum between them. “ You could go further to say that journalists should become an expert in … something. As curators, no longer gatekeepers, journalists need to be able to recognize what content is best suited for what audience and why. As a teacher, I know how difficult it is to make someone else an expert in some given topic. I find it much easier to become the expert and share the information I have so that I gain credibility.
Sometimes it’s necessary to go into boring details about a story. “In figuring out how to structure our stories and prioritize our reporting, we start at the top — tell the larger story — and work down.” This is where visualizations come in handy. It can be a daunting task trying to explain to the public the key points of a large and complex story. Data visualizations help put things into perspective. As new developments occur, interactive databases are put to the task, as they alter visualizations to custom fit a new angle or connection.
After all is said and done, journalists need to put a leash on the journalism overload problem — not just for the consumers, but for themselves as well. We need to become “masters of information management” who can curate content, not just aggregate it. It’s a big, big world, and it’s up to the expert content curators to capture their audience’s attention with the information that’s most relevant to them.
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