The word “curate,” lofty and once rarely spoken outside exhibition corridors or British parishes, has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to paste it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting. In more print-centric times, the term of art was “edit” — as in a boutique edits its dress collections carefully. But now, among designers, disc jockeys, club promoters, bloggers and thrift-store owners, curate is code for “I have a discerning eye and great taste.
This is an older piece but I found it when I started wondering why, all of a sudden, it seems, everyone is talking about part of the job of a journalist being curation. I was trying to figure out exactly how that is somehow a different thing for journalists to do than they did before. Then I see this story that says, in the media environment, it’s just a fancy way to say “edit.” I guess maybe without the pejorative that if I edit the news, I’m somehow keeping something from you. Curating the news, I guess, get’s more the meaning that I’m adding selected bits in for you. Interesting.