The Story of 'Storify' -- Written on 'Storify'

​Web journalists today operate within a "link economy." As well as doing their own reporting, they're responsible for "curating" information published elsewhere. The goal is to be responsive and collaborative -- to join the conversation around a story -- rather than ignoring what competitors are saying.Up to now, this ecosystem has been based on the humble hyperlink.

This means that journalists have had to manually insert text links and then embed photos, videos, or screen shots. As any journalist who's ever used MT or WordPress knows, this is a fairly clunky process.

Many print journalists are already resistant to the idea of the link economy: They find links distracting or unintuitive. The fact that it can take an extra half-hour to rigorously link an article doesn't help. And it's not an enjoyable process: Unless you keep a dozen browser windows open, you have to go back, re-find websites, upload images, then figure out how to properly credit photos taken from Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, or some dude's blog. At the end of the day, being link-economy-friendly turns into a time suck for journalists trapped in an era of "more with less." [Ed.: Let's not forget, the "link economy" is also a pretty word for the appropriation of other people's work and other people taking yours. It's a reality, but not everyone is thrilled about it.].

Enter Storify, a web startup designed to make curating online information as simple and intuitive as possible. I put together the following post about Storify using the program itself.

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