Sharing as a point of view

Om Malik in his recent article Amplification & the changing role of media writes:

Back in the day, news people made choice by deciding which stories to write. Today, we have to adopt a similar rigor about what we choose to share and amplify. In sharing (on Twitter or even re-blogging) we are sending the same message as doing an original news report. The easy thing is to share or reblog everything, but by being deliberate about it, we are essentially “editing” and telling the world: “this is how I see the world/this particular beat.”

[…] in the future when Dorsey, Zuckerberg and Hastings are no longer an anomaly, the media person’s role is no longer just reporting news. Reporting through sharing and curation are going to be vital roles for us to play.

I agree. If you want to become the lens through which your readers understand the world, writing is only part of the job. You also need to curate and share what other people have said, because selection is a form of argument.

The aim is to become the first place readers turn. Not last.

Automated, uncurated feeds make you neither early nor influential. They make you a pipe. Pipes are useful, but nobody asks them what they think.