|
You might be a fantastic writer, but without a good editor, and (in the case of one-offs like books) probably a good publisher, nobody will see it, or know it. The analogy of editor/publisher to aggregators/search engines seems pretty fair. If nobody deems your content worth aggregating to HN, maybe it isn't? People who read HN trust it the same way I imagine people who have read the NY Times or National Geographic their whole life trust it. When the web first started appearing as a news and editorial destination, it seems that people were quick to proclaim the death of curated content, because with infinite space and no need for physical resources, the constraints of binding your words together in 80 stapled pages of dead tree were history -- everything can just link to everything else, and when that fails, search! Turns out that the problem was never that a magazine could only be so many pages long, but that people only have so much time to be bothered with content they want to see. Online the content and the editorial dept don't need to share a building -- in some cases its probably still better if they do, and in others its probably better that they're se separate as possible. I don't think there's any less value on content, or on editorial curation of what content gets in front of people. Sites like HN, Digg, Amazon and Hulu are popular destinations because they offer tailored and curated gateways to content people want. The curators have always been the bosses of the content creators, but now that they don't have to live under the same roof -- now that anyone can curate anyone else's content, as long as their curation/editorial skills are deemed good enough by the public to get them enough readers/viewers -- the balance of power has gone a bit wacky. When Hulu's CEO called the TV networks "content providers" in that well-linked blog post a little whie back, few people batted an eye, but that was a huge slap in the face to those guys. If you're just the content provider, that means, on the org chart of the consumable content world, that Hulu is your boss -- they're your editor, your publisher, curating your content and choosing what lives and what dies. Hulu is supposed to be their dorky portal for cheapskate college students and bored secretaries! Why are they calling the shots now?? It's tiring to see people like Murdoch bellowing at top volume about their content being stolen when the content is the one thing people are still clamoring to consume by any means necessary. It's the editor's desk that's under attack and that's what's really freaking them out. |