The Art of Editing: The New
Old Skills for a Curated Life
Liz Danzico
School of Visual Arts | [e-mail]
January + February 2010

interactions

In a workshop led by Ira Glass, host of public radio’s “This American Life,” I heard him admit, “We edit out people’s breaths and pauses in the interviews before they go on air.” Referring to those ums and stammers, this well-known personality admitted to a group of aspiring storytellers that his renowned radio show might not be as unvarnished as it had once seemed. Editing out pauses makes the story flow better—a measure designed to improve his audience’s experience. Even the non-frilly is edited.

As the Information Age barrels forward, a new role has emerged. While platforms from Facebook to Twitter to Tumblr have turned consumers into creators, they’ve given way to more writers, more content, and (as we’re painfully aware) more choices. But there’s something else. Content creators are not passing content through traditional editorial channels, nor should they be. The job and the cost of filtering content has passed from the hands and pocket of the publisher way downstream to the consumer. As a result, consumers are left in the position of having to decide for themselves who and what is worth their time. Which content is exceptional and what to tune out? Whom to pay attention to? Whom to ignore?

Whether we accept it or not,
we have a new responsibility.
This promotion came about
without warning, without train-
ing, without org charts or man-
uals. As both creators and con-
sumers, now we’re all “editors.”
We often hear the term
“information overload” tossed
about—most likely as we skim
Google Reader, or perhaps while
we discuss multitasking as we
delete our way toward Inbox
Zero. Yet, more so than infor-
mation overload, we may be fac-
ing a “filter failure.” Clay Shirky,
author and New York University
instructor, pointed out in a 2008
talk at O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo
that information overload is not
a new problem and therefore
does not accurately describe
what’s at issue today. The criti-
cal issue is simply a failure of
filters.

Enter the editor. There has long been an invisible tribe, a mysterious group, who transform scattered thoughts into compelling stories, who splice hundreds of hours of video into feature-length films, who segregate the semicolons from the em dashes. These are editors working across media sectors— publishing, film, music, more— to deliver transformative stories with clarity and grace.

The editorial role has evolved
into one that involves shap-
ing conversations with audi-
ences. “Curate,” a term once
reserved for an elite group,
is being adopted by people as
far-flung as musicians and
chefs to fashion designers and,
indeed, interaction designers.
Rather than strict altering and
selecting as editors do, curators
are culling and selecting col-
lections. However the editor’s
legacy, and venerable history
of the editorial process, give
today’s curators visible models
to build upon.