2008 Really Is The Year of the Editor
On January 3rd I declared that 2008 would be the year of the editor. Around the same time Seth Godin was saying the same kind of thing. Turns out for once that I was right.
Today Gabe Riveria announced that Techmeme would start employing the use of editors to sort through the results of the automated algorithm. They have big hopes for the benefits of human editorial intelligence:
“The news will just get faster and more interesting. Obsolete stories will be eliminated sooner while breaking stories will be expedited. Related grouping will improve. Most of this will happen only on Techmeme, though other sites (like memeorandum and WeSmirch) will increasingly benefit from the direct human touch as well.”
I am hoping that an editor will increase the quality and timeliness of stories there. It may be asking too much to hope for a reduction in sensationalism since it is a business after all.
It has been a long time since one of my posts has been been linked to by Techmeme (that I know of). I don’t expect that to change (honestly, I want to read posts that are better quality than my own), but it will be interesting to see how human editors affect the variety of contributors to Techmeme. Will an algorithm or a human have a greater tendency to pick favorites?
BTW, I found out about the changes at Techmeme from a link at Hacker News. HN has become my goto source for tech / startup /etc news. One thing I prefer about Techmeme over HN is the related stories. If the quality goes up at Techmeme I could see myself preferring it.
Note: Techmeme is not the only example of 2008 being the year of the editor. I think Mahalo has proven itself to be a great resource during breaking news due to the process of editors (or curators).
I think there's a growing need for editors, especially online, but also because more authors are using alternative publishing methods. The conventional opportunities are shrinking like an iceberg in global warming, though — I lost my two main gigs this year.