Can you post that? Should you?

Our Rocky Mountains ONA group held a very successful panel discussion about content curation and aggregation Wednesday evening, at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

The idea for the panel arose about two months ago, on the day our local Online News Association group met for a social event at a Denver gastropub. 

A discussion about the subject during my work day carried over into the evening and led to the idea for the panel. From that inception, we hoped to gather a lawyer, ethicist, reporter and website manager to speak and debate the issue.

Happily, I was successful in gathering exactly those experts. Panelists last night were Derigan Silver, media law professor from the University of Denver; Paul Voakes, a journalism professor who researches ethics at the University of Colorado; Mitchell Byars, a reporter for the Daily Camera and heavy social media users; and Will Holden, a digital content producer for KDVR.

Between 15 and 20 people were in attendance, fewer than I had hoped, but they were actively engaged in the conversation and asking questions. That, along with the energetic participation of the four panelists, left me with a very successful feeling about the evening.

To paraphrase the summation of the panel’s consensus: aggregation and curation differ because curation involves the thoughtful addition of context. But just because it is possible – even legal-  to gather content it does not always mean you should. The bar, they agreed, is set in each individual situation by thoughtful consideration of the context, newsworthiness and potential impact.

Below is an embed of the slides I had up during the various topics of conversation. Additionally, here is a live blog that gathered tweets using the hashtag #RMONA.