TechDirt points to a discussion about today’s newsroom and the idea a new role in a newsroom: Curators. That is, someone who would help readers by sorting, organizing, verifying, and editing information that’s already on the Web or in the media.

Traditional journalists might look down on this, as journalism programs really focus hot and heavy on front-line reporting roles and editing roles. J-schools don’t focus on roles that look at existing information and putting that into context for readers, even though that’s what a lot of publications are focusing on at the moment — original and investigative reporting being rather expensive.

It might be a hard sell at first, since that’s not prestigious work and probably not what a lot of people want to get into journalism for.

But making news accessible and ensuring that things are verified and in context… that’s deeply important, too. Looking at it just from my beat — the IT industry and open source community in particular — a lot of projects are sort of self-reporting. Information is available from thousands of sources (seriously… my Google Reader feeds prove that…) that are far too disperse for most readers to see things firsthand. There’s quite a bit of value in curating the news, when it’s done well. Some sites already do this, to varying degrees of success. And it’s certainly true that someone in a pure curator role is not looked at as a journalist in the strictest sense — but maybe they should be.

A good example of this would be Groklaw. The Groklaw folks do some original reporting and investigation, but the site is primarily about curating the SCO case and related information. It’s obviously proven valuable for a large audience. And I’d argue that it’s journalism working just as it should. If Groklaw’s not being taught in J-schools now as a case study for the future of media, it ought to be: maybe it isn’t a model of for-profit publishing, but it’s showing what can be done with new tools and a community of interested contributors with a few curators at the helm.

A bad example of this… well, I don’t like to point fingers. But there are plenty of linkroll sites where the editors / moderators don’t practice any verification or use reasonable judgment in publishing links or stories. Sites that pose as gatekeepers should have moderators that actually do some vetting of stories and be more responsible about what they link to. I see too many sites that play up any “controversy” or give a very loud soapbox to people who really don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.

It might be difficult to get the public as fired up about other important topics as Groklaw’s audience is, but it’d be interesting to try.

I do disagree with Mike Masnick’s conclusion that “if a newsroom were set up with a focus on these three roles… I doubt we’d see newspapers struggling as much as they are today.”

Maybe newspapers would be struggling a tiny, little bit less. But the problems newspapers face are not simply due to changing roles in the newsroom — the financial system that has supported newspapers has collapsed. Sites like Craigslist have devastated the revenue model for some papers. Advertisers are less interested in supporting traditional media.

But the reporter, columnist, editor, curator newsroom has some promise. I hope that this idea catches on.