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# Maria Popova of Brain Pickings on attention and journalism
- URL: https://onemanandhisblog.com/2014/09/maria-popova-journalism-attention-link/
- Published: 2014-09-01T11:09:37.000Z
- Updated: 2015-04-08T16:21:22.000Z
- Author: Adam Tinworth
- Tags: attention, Blogging, brain pickings, curation, Journalism, maria popova

![Maria Popova](https://i1.wp.com/www.onemanandhisblog.com/content/images/2014/09/maria-popva.jp_.jpg?resize=960%2C640 "maria-popva.jp.jpg")

Here’s a [fascinating interview with Maria Popova](http://www.theeuropean-magazine.com/maria-popova/8840-maria-popova-on-information-in-the-digital-age?ref=onemanandhisblog.com), curator of the truly excellent *[Brain Pickings](http://www.brainpickings.org/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com)* blog.

Some choice highlights:

> I can’t speak for others, but I’ve found in myself a tendency to retreat deeper and deeper into my existing interests as a form of self-defense against the abundance of demands for my time and attention. Again, it takes a certain discipline not to do that and to continually expand one’s ideological comfort zone, as it does not to scatter oneself too chaotically across a multitude of diversion.

And, on journalism, this:

> Every nonfiction writer is essentially a curator of ideas – whether this means the selection of academic and clinical studies to be cited in a Malcolm Gladwell-style pop psychology book or the snippets of articles highlighted and contextualized in a day’s worth of Andrew Sullivan’s blog. At their best, journalists – writers, editors, “curators”, or whatever we choose to label them – help people figure out what matters in the world and why. The label under which they do it is irrelevant.

One of the most thought-provoking interviews I’ve read in a while.

*Photo by [Ryan Lash for TED conferences](https://www.flickr.com/photos/tedconference/8519223216/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com), and used under a Creative Commons licence*