Mikiane.com suggests (en Francais) that the journalist is a DJ. I like that. It’s a bit less haughty than what I’ve been saying lately: The journalist is a curator. Curators work in stuffy museums where they control everything in sight and tell people where to go; they package their world, like a newspaper, in a box with a bow. DJs work in the cacaphony of a dance floor, which is more like life. It’s up to the folks on the floor whether to dance to the tunes the DJ sets.
The journalist is so awkward with music selection, that the folks on the dance floor choose to leave the building rather than stay around. No variety. No listening to requests from the crowd. The DJ wants to force the crowd into the DJ’s taste, and that pushy single-mindedness is what’s costing the DJ a living these days. Pity.
[...] Jeff Jarvis points to what may be a better analogy for the role of a modern journalst: A nightclub DJ. [...]
Jeff:
As expected, the Google robots make a mash of the translation, but my daughter used her Mad HS French Skillz to help ferret out this bit, which is true, but which is sure to piss more than a few investigative reporters off:
“This does not mean that the report or the investigation died, it simply means that this activity, extremely expensive, can no longer be their only activity. Exclusive content is a loss leader…”
Sacre bleu!
http://timwindsor.com/2008/11/02/thinking-of-the-journalist-as-a-dj-instead-of-a-curator/
And don’t forget that everyone is a DJ.
[...] Jarvis notes the beauty of thinking of journalists as modern day DJ’s, who tries to find a tune for the crowd to dance to. As he states the notion is much livelier than [...]
Someone who can’t recognise original work will not be able to value it.
An editor is a better analogy for a DJ. But someone has to do the original research – even if Jeff doesn’t recognize such a thing.
[...] type of things that a museum curator does as Mindy McAdams explains on Teaching Online Journalism. Or, if you prefer, think of our job as a DJ, who selects from millions of tunes which ones to spin t… Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine used that term in a post last year, citing a French blogger’s [...]