Smart curators would quickly realize that to maximize their income, they should look for good online content in more places than just the websites of big-name existing publications.

For example, small literary or professional journals could be excellent hunting grounds.  So might individual writers’ blogs or other types of web pages.

The net effect of this form of curation would be to bring more high-quality content than ever to the reading public, while at the same time enabling more writers than ever to build followings and reputations—and finally make a decent amount of money from the most meaningful work they’ll ever do.

Positive effects are also likely to be felt among a writer’s friends and acquaintances.  Just knowing a person like themselves who has been accepted into the larger conversations of the day can substantially diminish their own sense of being hopelessly excluded.

This is exactly the kind of structural change—giving Davids a reasonable chance to compete with Goliaths—that a world currently suffering under the crush of a toxic gigantism of scale needs in order to grow healthier.

A similar model of content curation, marketing, and distribution could also be applied to more than just our reading material—and yield comparably positive results.