Web content curation--are journalism coming back?

We all experience the overwhelming flood of information on the net. Social media has not necessarily made the task of being informed easier. Even among experts and the people at the forefront of the new media this problem is recognized. As a potential solution the notion of curation is discussed as a idea that refers to the act of collecting, refining, and presenting information in a way that can be trusted. Sounds like traditional journalism to me.

For instance, at this panel description at the SXSW conference recently: "With all the stuff we weed through online, good filters are crucial. Who's best-suited to determine what's best, curators or the crowd? People have their religion about one or the other, however this panel will focus on the overlap, the grey areas and how curating and crowd-sourcing enrich each other."

I believe we need large broad public well-developed arenas (by professional journalists) where important societal issues are described, reported, and discussed and I still find the book Republic.com by Sunstein to be one of the most important, challenging, and valuable contributions to this debate. Why not go back and read it again....