Burt Herman is a co-founder of real-time curation service Storify. I first heard about Storify on this Scobleizer post, and I’ve tested it for Samsung USA at SXSW and for myself at M2C (you can see an embeded example at the bottom of this post). I met with Burt at the Samsung Blogger Lounge at SXSWi and he was kind  enough to answer my questions. You can follow Burt @burtherman

1. What’s the story of Storify?

Storify is founded by Burt Herman, a former Associated Press bureau chief and correspondent, and Xavier Damman, a Belgian engineer who was publisher of a crowdsourced student magazine. Both share a passion for media and technology, and about how to reinvent online publishing to embrace the social Web. They met early last year and joined together to launch Storify in private beta in September 2010. Storify is about enabling storytellers to find the best of social media to tell elegant stories that resonate and enlighten. We want to empower storytellers with simple tools that help them find the media that matters amid the flood of media.

2. Journalists have always been storytellers but they haven’t always been “curators” of social content. What does social curation mean for the future of journalism?

Curation is a buzzword that represents what journalists have always done: Finding sources for information and synthesizing it into concise stories that a general audience can understand. We now have more sources than ever due to social media empowering people to create content, so journalists now have a much richer pool of information to choose from. This is an opportunity and the start of a new golden age for journalism.

3. There are some people that have been “curating” since the beginning of the web. Are you targeting such curators or do you believe Storify is for the masses?

Storify is about empowering users to easily tell stories using social media, and it can be used by anyone — journalists, bloggers, companies or just regular people. Everyone has a story to tell, from serious news like the Japan tsunami to a personal story about a wedding or child’s birthday.

4. It seems like Facebook is always adding features that were pioneered by companies like Twitter, Flickr, Foursquare, Groupon, and Disqus. Are you concerned about Facebook or other giants adding features similar to Storify’s?

We are at the intersection of other social networks and are agnostic about the sources for stories. We view companies like Facebook as potential partners.

5. What separates Storify from services like Curated.by and Keepstream?

We are about storytelling and helping our users find memorable and meaningful posts from social networks to tell stories.

6. What advice would you give to future tech startup CEOs?

Follow your passion!

NOTE: Below is an embedded Storify story made up of tweets about M2C.

Cathy Brooks is a journalist, creative media strategist, and host of the Social Media Hour live podcast. She blogs at Other Than That, which is also the name of her consulting firm, and she has worked for companies like Tech TV (now G4) and Seesmic. In last night’s The Social Nerdia Show! I spoke with her about media, journalism, newspapers, technology, business, and much more. Cathy is not only highly entertaining, she is also incredibly insightful and thought-provoking.

Listen to the entire conversation with Cathy on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe to us on iTunes, stream from mobiles on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

Cathy’s tagline for her podcast is ‘it’s not about the tools, it’s about what you do with them,’ and it very well reflects her views on technology. She has much appreciation and enthusiasm for “the way that technology is used or not, successfully or not, and the impact that has on the way we buy things, share information, communicate with each other, and just evolve as carbon based life forms.”

The Two Medias

The fact that Cathy has much experience in traditional media led me to ask her about the now very widely use ‘social media’ term. She responded that there are two kinds of media, “media with a capital M and media with a lower case m.” The first one is ‘the media,’ and it includes outlets from large organizations like News Corporation and The New York Times Company, as well as blogs like The Huffington Post and Tech Crunch. “Lower case m (media) are the platforms, the technology, the things we use, the social networks, the real-time stream things like Twitter, Blogtalkradio, Facebook, YouTube, and the list goes on and on,” she explained.

While some would argue that the concept of media is not much more than a channel or a means to deliver some form of content, Cathy think that media has always been social. “Social media to me is a rather redundant term as opposed to an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp. Media is by its nature a social thing and it has become more so in its interactivity, crowdsourced nature, and user generated contributions,” she told me.

The Case for Journalism

There has been much talk about the death of the newspaper and the traditional media organization in the last few years, but Cathy thinks this has been “greatly exaggerated.” She continued to say that while “some of these types of media outlets, some of the mediums, may either die or change greatly, the need for journalism has never been more important.”

Even though journalists these days can easily become bloggers, “a blogger is not necessarily a journalist.” Cathy further expressed that she wants “reporters to be human, but at the same time if i want to know their opinion I’ll look for them to have an opinion somewhere else.” The web has allowed journalism to thrive in ways that were not possible before, but it is essential to not forget that journalists still have a responsibility to work with “integrity, fact-checking, looking for multiple stories to ensure accuracy, providing clear perspectives, etc.”

Of course, expectations can’t be unrealistic. We’re all humans so bias is impossible to avoid. As Cathy said, “if you have a human creating content that has a heart and an opinion, it’s going to bleed through somewhere.. the trick is, how do you keep that reasonable and how do you make sure you keep that clean?”

The McPaper and Ruper Murdoch

Cathy mentioned that one big problem with the news  is the mentality of the “mcpaper, the watering down and sensationalizing of content,” which she attributes in part to Mr. Ruper Murdoch. “For the record, I loathe Rupert Murdoch, I think he’s one of the worst things that have happened to journalism, not to media… that aside, i think he’s a genius businessman, absolutely brilliant businessman.”

Brilliant businessman or not, Murdoch has made some headlines recently. Here are Cathy’s thoughts on charging for content:

“The people who say that people won’t pay for things online, i believe, are wrong.. I’m not suggesting that eveyrthing should be a pay-model, but in the real world, in a capitalist society, which guess what? that’s what we live in, we dont get by with good looks and good cheer. We pay for things. Really good content is expensive to make.”

While Cathy sees a future where more people are ok with charging for great online content, she does not agree with Murdoch’s move of pulling content out of Google. Listen to the interview for Cathy’s recommendations for Rupert and his media empire.

The Survival of Newspapers Starts with Stolen Newspapers

All the talk about what’s happening with journalism and media made me think of EPIC 2014, a video about the potential future of the web and news, that went viral a few years ago. I told Cathy about how the EPIC 2014 video by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson imagined The New York Times of the future as an offline newsletter for the elderly. Cathy told me that she actually gets the NYT delivered every day and that for her, the newspaper is “a physical experience.”

She also expressed that people that grow up with newspapers have a “very emotional attachment to it.” She went on to describe how her newspapers started to get stolen at some point and she narrowed her thief search to eight people in her building. She fully made her point by asking “if newspapers are dying, then why is some schmuck stealing my newspaper every morning?”

Newspapers have the competitive advantage of compiling the news of the day and presenting them in one single package. “You can’t say to your (RSS) reader to show you things you don’t know about.. the newspaper provides you with information from around the world and all you have to do is browse through it.”

With the large quantities of information being published online throughout the day, we can rejoice in the fact that there are technologies that are helping “curate the firehose, curate the feedbag.” One such service is www.my6sense.com, which Cathy recommends because it “prioritizes and selects (news) based on your behavior on your reader.”

Cathy the Geek

It is not hard to see that Cathy enjoys two things: talking and technology. “I’m a total geek. I admit it.” She wasn’t always a geek though. After working in radio for many years, she found herself doing PR for tech companies. She found it fascinating, not for the tech itself, at least not at first, but because of the people.

She remembers thinking that the people she was meeting “were insanely smart, truly interested in changing the world and doing so in a very substantive way, changing processes, and enabling people to do things they couldn’t do before, connecting people, and automating things.” She was drawn to the “deep passion and incredible joy that so many of them bring to what they do.”

Having to understand complex ideas to explain it in simple terms to the media and the average person has allowed Cathy to become not just a geek, but also provided her with deep insight about the value behind the bits and bytes.

These days, Cathy has her own consulting firm Other Than That, and she has been helping clients navigate the social media world. She’s even helping large companies like Nokia. Regarding her relationship with Nokia, she explained that she always discloses the fact that she’s working with them, and that there are things she simply won’t do if she doesn’t feel comfortable about it. “As long as it’s relevant and they don’t expect that it’s going to be all sunshine, roses and unicorns, then it’s fine,” she said. Cathy’s also always very honest  about what she really thinks about their products.

We talked about how honesty and disclosure need to be integrated into blogs. Cathy has no problem with the FTC putting guidelines because “if someone is paying to say what you say and you don’t disclose that, it’s disingenuous.”

Kara Andrade from HablaHonduras and I have a panel up for consideration for the 2010 SXSW Interactive Festival and we’d appreciate it so much if you guys voted for us and commented here on SXSW’s PanelPicker.

Labor Day is the last day to vote!

You can also help us spread the word by sharing this link http://bit.ly/votesxsw with everyone you know.

The title of the panel is “Here Come All the Latino Bloggers” and we intend to boldy go where few Latinos have been expected to go before. You might have noticed the lack of latino representation at everybody’s favorite interactive event in Austin, TX, but I am proud to announce that the Latino blogger, columnist, and citizen journalist has finally arrived.

Our panel will be about what is happening online and offline in Latin America, including Streisand effects, citizen journalism, jounalism 2.0, social injustice, and the digital divide.

The panel will also let you find out out more about the bloggers that are leaving a mark in the US and worldwide in the name of Latin America when it comes to politics, social justice, marketing, music, and technology.

By the way, here are some of the questions we hope to answer with out panel:

1. What is the role of citizen media in the future media landscape in Latin America?
2. What are the main differences and challenges met compared to the US arena?
3. What is the role of the language for the media? Dual language or not?
4. How are these projects being funded and how are they sustaining themselves in developing markets?
5. What are the main challenges as far as technology?
6. What role does cellphone play in the landscape?
7. What privacy concerns do the introduction of citizen media in Latin America raise?
8. What are some case studies and best practices
9. Why don’t more people notice Latino bloggers and Latin American online media spaces?
10. What is the role of citizen media for emerging Spanish-speaking countries where democracy is shaky at best?

These are scary times for old media. The Internet has forced them to change or die or both. The media decline is probably most obvious in newspapers. The New York Times is not yet “a print newsletter for the elite and the elderly,” as the EPIC 2014 video put it in 2004, but it is definitely not what it used to be. The Wall Street Journal’s gloomy financial results are not getting any better. You don’t have to be a finance guru to know that the rest of the newspapers are also struggling.

Similarly, magazines are barely making it. Book sales are great, but only if you are JK Rowling. Hollywood movies are downloadable, sometimes even reviewed, before they are released. Marketers and consumers continuously wonder if TV is overpriced. Record labels and the music industry are running out of dumb ideas and Radiohead’s good ideas make their dumb ideas seem even dumber. And AM/FM radio… well, I can’t remember the last time I listened to it, but I’ve heard several podcasts and Pandora stations in the last few days.

And while MySpace continues to slide downhill from social web darling to shady poster child for uncoolness, its less than proud papa News Corp. is trying to change the way we consume news by announcing that it will charge for news content. Yes, charging, as in asking you to pay money for it.

Last time I checked, the news were free. The news are available to all and shared via links. The clicks on those links are what keeps advertisers paying for ads and what should make them pay much more in the future.

Everyone knows that The Wall Street Journal is one of the best newspapers in the world and that its writers are exceptional. I subscribed to it once (several years ago) and then canceled shortly after because I simply didn’t know what to do with such a huge pile of unread paper.

The same goes for magazines. While I’ve subscribed to some, I end up canceling the majority of them. The problem is that I can often get similar content online, for free. If I really wanted to read some quality journalism on quality print, like The Economist or Harvard Business Review, then I would head down to my second favorite source for free reading: Barnes and Noble. B&N has a plethora of covers and articles available for everyone to enjoy without paying a cent. I would rather spend my money on a coffee while sitting on a comfy chairs , than subscribe to a bunch of magazines and newspapers.

So if I am not prone to pay for printed media, why would I want to pay for news online? I can get news from more than enough sources; from blogs to content aggregators to syndication sites to pretty much anyone with a Twitter account.

Sure, some sites charge for some of their content. AdAge is one of them. And that’s ok, I forgive them for it.

Charge all you want, but I won’t pay for it and most people won’t either. You can paint your distribution channel with pretty colors and tell me it’ll only be a few micropayments, and you still won’t convince me. Unlike music, the news have always been free from a consumer point of view.

Still, as crazy as the idea sounds, News Corp. is thinking differently and I give them props for that. Trying out a “new” old model is not a dumb idea. It’s just an old idea that probably won’t work.

News Corp. couldn’t have naively made such a huge decision so I wonder if I’m wrong. What if this wasn’t just about Murdoch reacting to the $2B loss announcement? And what if all the global media moguls got together for some tea in the Caribbean and decided that it’s time to say “enough is enough.” What if one day we had no choice but to pay micropayments for every single news site out there?

If all news sites started to charge for the news, then three things would happen. One, those that paid for the news would have a competitive advantage. Two, those that paid for the news would make it available for free elsewhere on blogs, content aggregators, and other, gasp, advertising-sponsored means. And three, the media moguls would realize that the 3% of the population that decided to pay for news would not do so forever. That pretty much brings us back to where we started.

And that’s why the media moguls won’t get together for tea in the Caribbean. Some of them are busy being greedy, scared and skeptical, while others are brainstorming for a better solution that includes advertisements. Some might follow the News Corp. path and some will not. Quality journalism will always have its place and some people will pay for bits of it, but I’m not sure it will be enough.

Regardless, most of us will probably keep reading the news. For free. Online. And at Barnes & Noble, where there’s free Wi-Fi. I might even take a break from the news to read Chris Anderson’s “Free” book, which I got for free from Amazon and is now readily available on my free Kindle app on my iPod Touch.

So, in conclusion, since we already have the Internet’s free news content, what we REALLY need is a 24-hour bookstore. Someone should get on that. Let’s just hope it’s not Mr. Murdoch or we’ll be charged by the hour for hanging out in there.

Kara Andrade is the lead project coordinator of HablaHonduras, a web site that allows people in Honduras to voice their thoughts via the web, SMS, email, and Twitter. But HablaHonduras is not just a lot of noise about a small country in Central America.

Consisting of 80% original content and 20% aggregated content, and with almost a month of being in existence, the site has become both a platform and a destination for what’s happening in Honduras amidst confusing and historical times. HablaHonduras is about citizen journalism today and what it could become.

After immigrating as a child from Guatemala with her mother, Kara grew up in the United States and lived in over 20 states. From a young age she thrived on challenges and became fascinated with innovation. “People misunderstand innovation.. innovation is like ‘astucia’, which literally translates to astuteness.. thinking in a way that is so on the spot with the needs that you have, that you find the angle, you find the right answer,” Kara told me.

Kara has done a lot of work with public health, her “first career” and still one of her many passions, but “it was so difficult to create change.” While she still believes that public health can be very powerful, Kara is today a journalist and multimedia reporter who seeks for ways to make a difference.

Kara’s desire to create change might be her primary reason for getting involved with unique projects like HablaHonduras. The thing about HablaHonduras is that it is a web site where anyone can provide input. The only requirement is that it is about Honduras. And the willingness of many in Honduras to speak out is not as simple as it sounds because freedom of speech does not mean the same thing in every country. ”It takes a lot of courage to do what they’re doing.”

Kara also told me about how the site exists as a “democracy” and how its future is really in the hand of its users, in the hand of Honduras. Kara explained that her team is “there for them (Honduras).. and they’re not used to that. I’m here to provide guidance on whatever direction they want to go.”

But HablaHonduras is only the beginning.

The vision is to create an overall hub called HablaCentro, which will ultimately become the center for sites for each of the different countries in Central America (and perhaps beyond), and to organize “citizen caravans” in which teams visit various locations to partner with local journalists to teach, train and mentor people about media, the web, and journalism. The idea is that news would be rapidly covered locally and in the correct context, instead of having to wait for somone from AP or another country. The goal is big and it’s audatious, but such a rewarding challenge will probably drive Kara and team (plus what already is a large network of contributors in Honduras) to do their best to make it a reality. I’m sure their astuteness will help them along the way.

You can listen to the conversation / interview in its entirety on the blogtalkradio player above or by subscribing to our podcast on iTunes.

Cali Lewis is the producer, writer and host of GeekBrief.TV, a video podcast about tech, consumer electronics, and web 2.0. An influential person in the tech community, Cali is also quite down to earth and recently did an awesome job as an organizer of WordCamp Dallas 2009, where I was able to ask her some questions.

In the two videos below, you’ll learn about Cali’s real (but not very googleable) name, her geeky roots, and her transition from self-storage manager to full-time video podcaster.

Cali also told me about having friends not “fans” (with one exception), the exciting future of AR and 4G networks, and the threat that bloggers pose to journalists. Cali is aware that “the internet is not going to wipe out TV, just like TV didn’t wipe out the radio, and the radio didn’t wipe out the newspaper“, but it’s clear that online productions of high quality like GeekBrief.TV are  transforming the way we watch and think of content on the web.

Jennifer Leggio is the director of strategic communications for Fortinet, as well as a regular blogger on ZDNet and co-host of the Quick-n-Dirty show on blogtalkradio. Having spent more than 15 years in the communications industry, she has a good grasp on technology, network security, and digital media.

Jennifer also played an accidental role in the naming of this web site (a typo she wrote basically helped inspire the name “Social Nerdia“). Please follow Jennifer aka Mediaphyter on Twitter and make sure to pay attention to any thought-provoking typos.

1. How do you balance your life while working at Fortinet, blogging for ZDNet, and contributing to other projects?

It’s tough. I sacrifice a lot of my personal life. While Fortinet is flexible and understanding of my “double life,” my job there is my first and foremost priority, and it has both its demands and rewards. I need to write at least two to three times per week for ZDNet and I have pretty high standards for what I post on the blog. I don’t like to do little blurbs that just riff on other people’s research. I like to do my own research. It’s challenging but worth it. I just need to find a way to work a little more “me” time into the equation and I’ll be satisfied.

2. You write about “social business”. Do you think there’s a place for every company (products/services, B2C/B2B, etc.) in the social web?

Every company? That might be a stretch. I think it all comes down to a company’s business objectives and brand strategy. For the most part there are opportunities for marketing and sales growth, crowdsourcing, customer engagement and customer support in the social Web, but the approaches vary greatly and there absolutely is no “one size fits all” approach.

3. What drew you into the world of technology?

I’d always been interested in computers and the growth of technology and related trends. I’ve never been a true geek or a coder, but always liked to watch how it worked from the outside (like a kid touring a factory). When I burnt out on journalism (I was a copy editor at The Orange County Register) I decided to move to Silicon Valley and jump into technology. I took a “sink or swim” approach. It’s been about nine years so far, and I feel pretty safe taking the arm floaties off now.

4. You’ve been using the name “Mediaphyter” for over a decade. Where does the name come from and what does it mean to you?

In my silly definition, me. Me as a newfound journalist when I was 19 years old (I started writing obituaries and doing community news for The Press-Enterprise at that time). A “mediaphyte” to me was a play off of “neophyte.” However, “mediaphyte” was taken and since I’m known to have a bit of a petulant personality, “Mediaphyter” was born. It was made even more appropriate when I dove into PR after leaving the journalism world.

5. Is it good for everyone to be fully transparent online?

I think, just like talking about businesses and social media, it depends on the person. And if you decide to live a transparent life there still need to be boundaries. I live pretty transparently via social networks. You may know I am going out to dinner or hanging out with a certain person or what I am watching on television, but I very rarely talk about specifics of my personal life, or my family, or other more private issues. A lot also depends on your company culture, too. If you work for a conservative company or are in a more business-focused role, you may be more image-conscious. If you’re in the medical field, you may also have to consider privacy requirements, too.

6. Do you think security and safety are things we strive for but won’t ever fully obtain?

I imagine you’re speaking of Internet issues when asking this question. It’s hard to say. I think that we can become a lot more secure and safe online if there were standards for user awareness and education, but hackers and cyber criminals think and move fast. Thankfully there are a lot of security firms and standards groups out there who provide good solutions, but the threatscape changes quickly. I think many of the security issues relative to social networks lie in the hands of the users; they can’t expect the sites to give them common sense. They need to have that on their own. If you’re the type who blindly forwards joke emails or clicks on every link you see, you should steer clear of the Internet.

7. You might remember that the name “Social Nerdia” came about after I misread a typo you had on Twitter. Do you think Twitter would be better off with a spell-checker? What kind of features would you like to see added to Twitter?

I think spell checking is the least of Twitter’s worries and most of the third-party apps have it, I believe. I know for sure that TweetDeck does, and when I use Twitter Web my Mozilla Firefox warns me if I have a typo. I’d like to see Twitter offer better friend / follower management options, as that’s the one piece that I don’t think a third-party service does or can do well. I also would like to see them find a way to monetize the mashups they did last year around the election. I am surprised they haven’t done more of them and I think there’s a huge opportunity not only for Twitter itself but for the businesses leveraging Twitter as part of their brand marketing strategies.

8. I read that you like “As I Lay Dying” (the band). AILD is one of my favorites too, especially live. What’s your favorite song and why? Also, have you heard of “Austrian Death Machine”?

I’ve seen AILD live twice but it’s been about five years since the last time. I don’t have it in me to keep up with the hardcore kids. My favorite AILD tune of all time is “Distance is Darkness,” not only because I love the vocals, but because of this lyric: “Pain, despite it all, there is love.” I try to convince most people that I am a cynic, but that lyric really resonates with me as a mantra for life. Times might get tough, you might face battles, but despite it all, you have the people who love you and your love for them. It’s pretty cool. Oh, and I’ve never heard Austrian Death Machine.

9. What advice would you give to companies that don’t yet have a social media presence?

I was on a podcast the other day with Matthew Lees and he said it better than I could: “Don’t be afraid to try and to fail.” Yes, you need to consider your business objectives and which tools might get you to your end goals, but sometimes you don’t know what those are unless you stick your neck out there. Sure you might get criticized (I recently lambasted nine companies on my blog) but there’s something to be respected about companies who at least try to be different. The major fail point is when it’s clear they were merely jumping on the bandwagon rather than thinking it out for themselves.