Maria Popova of Brain Pickings on attention and journalism
Here’s a fascinating interview with Maria Popova, curator of the truly excellent Brain Pickings blog.
Some choice highlights:
I can’t speak for others, but I’ve found in myself a tendency to retreat deeper and deeper into my existing interests as a form of self-defense against the abundance of demands for my time and attention. Again, it takes a certain discipline not to do that and to continually expand one’s ideological comfort zone, as it does not to scatter oneself too chaotically across a multitude of diversion.
And, on journalism, this:
Every nonfiction writer is essentially a curator of ideas – whether this means the selection of academic and clinical studies to be cited in a Malcolm Gladwell-style pop psychology book or the snippets of articles highlighted and contextualized in a day’s worth of Andrew Sullivan’s blog. At their best, journalists – writers, editors, “curators”, or whatever we choose to label them – help people figure out what matters in the world and why. The label under which they do it is irrelevant.
One of the most thought-provoking interviews I’ve read in a while.
Photo by Ryan Lash for TED conferences, and used under a Creative Commons licence
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Some Good Reading About The Future of News Paid Members Public
Good stuff I’ve read recently, haven’t linked to yet, but don’t have much to add to right now: * The Nichepaper Manifesto [http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/07/the_nichepaper_manifesto.html] – an articulate and well argued guide to how niche publishing might looks going forwards. * Media