Congrats @digidave on @circa . Forward looking approach to information architecture. I hear often that the future of news enterprise is not in gathering news on the ground, but in organizing and pointing to it. I wonder (thinking aloud) if gathering news in-the-field, on the ground is the aspirational journalism career it once was. Will future journos assume someone "else" is always gathering material on the ground that they will package and aggregate? (And of course, there will be and the two will go hand in hand). But could it be that the best journalism jobs of the future have little to do with being on the ground, gathering information?

@Andy an interesting conversation to have. I would say a few things.

1. Circa is still missing a really awesome feature that shows a more subtle approach to curation that I don't think we've seen before. The "assets" of @jeffjarvis "assets and paths." The feature got yanked for technical reasons this morning - expect it soon.

But to @rafat point - elegant and thoughtful curation is still not original reporting.

I wouldn't say one type of journalism job (curation vs reporting) is better than the other. It certainly might be better for an individual. Some might want to be a foreign correspondent. Others might want to be a city hall/civics reporter. Others might want to be a desk reporter - making calls/emails. etc. But I would argue ....

Continued: I would argue that MANY news organizations do a kind of "curative, rewritten content" much like Circa - they just put it in a familiar article next to original reporting and the lines are blurred. I think about the Supreme Court Justice. Did anyone break the news really? Yes - the Supreme Court did. Everyone else just re-wrote it (some too quickly to get it right).

Point being: Being "on the ground" has EXTREME and irreplaceable value for finding certain kinds of information. For others - it doesn't. We just need a better way of distinguishing one from the other.

End my .02

First, I'd like to acknowledge my ignorance. I have no formal training and have no right to pontificate about the future of journalism, so take my perspective with a grain of salt.

But I think The News breaks down into two categories:

1. What's going on?
&
2. What does it mean?

Journalists will always be vital for the former. As Jonah says, "The world needs reporters looking for NEW information" (source: branch.com)

For the latter, (due to the democratization of personal publishing platforms) the average individual will be most important. Everyone is an expert at something, and publishing is now a button, as Clay Shirky likes to say. We no longer need "professional" publishers to tell us what The News means, I think.

I LOVE Circa (see: twitter.com) but I don't think it represents the future of journalism, and I think it's a stretch to call it journalism.

You guys have a very innovative approach to The News and I am/will be an avid fan, but you're doing what my Dad used to do for me when I was younger: you're simplifying The News. Making it approachable and digestible. But that's not journalism, IMHO.

Actually, I don't disagree. I too make a distinction btwn news/journalism. I disagree a bit on how you define journalism. I often say 'it's a process, not a product.' The process is collecting, filtering and distributing information (caveats that the info is true, accurate, etc). One could also add fourth aspect ie: it adds meaning. So I don't think we are far off. Circa, as noted, is not original reporting. Although - the format of it (which is what is unique) could easily support original reporting. As a startup we don't do it - but that doesn't mean we can't in future (apples/oranges between critique of Circa as not journalism and critique of circa content format). All this is to say - I think we are very much on the same page.

@josh-- i like how you capitalize The News. If only. I think Circa serves a function in that it gets you to look at stories in a different way that you would if say you were scrolling through a tedious amount of text, so there's definitely value. I've covered democratization/gift economy/crowdsourcing/citizen journalism for a while and I think it's a thing that's there, that every news source has to incorporate, but think it has obvious limitations as well as presents I think there's tremendous value in the modern professional journalist to fact-check and add value and context, bu really the best journalists have always condensed difficult concepts into palpable terms. (cont.)

I think a Candy Crowley, someone who's spent two decades studying and covering elections would think differently about the need for professional journalists. But the day of one to many is definitely over. But then again, I think in many ways, so is the day of many to many. Maybe it's the time of some to many. Or Some to some. Anyway.. my point of interest here is that somewhere someone has to gather the original material for many stories, not just events that require a press release and a pool reporter, and I worry about what could be a downside to an otherwise great trend of coding journos: a legion of journos who never leave the cube.