What is a news paper but a curation of written articles?
Their flaw however was in the obstacle of physical distribution, something quite costly, geo-bound, making it difficult for new entrants to compete. Thus, an industry prone to capture by those who use narratives as a weapon.
The internet has somewhat obviated this, but not completely. The distributors of the internet, companies operating servers and databases and UX designers, became the new curators. A hybrid of technical and social engineering dug moats of "network effect"
Email lists and RSS feeds have long offered independent distribution, but self-curation with these is a tedious after-thought in their design.
The unfiltered noise of Nostr may however be the pendulum swinging back by showing us the need for curation. A permissionless and cost-nominal standard for distribution breaks legacy network-effects, and in so doing illustrates our dependence on filters.