Nick Gillespie: Put against the broad array of the internet and this explosion in access to text, do more people have more access to more of the past, or do they just get lost in the clutter?

Lewis Lapham: Well, that’s the reason for curators. Yes, I’m a curator here. I’m like a museum director. And a lot of people who run blogs are the same. I mean, if you go to Truthout or Truthdig or Tomdispatch, essentially these are curated compilations or anthologies. And there’s going to be more and more and more of that, because as the internet becomes so crowded, it eventually becomes incomprehensible. So you’re going to have to find some source you can trust. And this, of course, is the secret of all successful American journalism — that’s the Readers Digest, that’s Time Magazine, that’s Poor Richard’s Almanac.

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From the tail end of Nick Gillespie’s reason.com interview with Lewis Lapham, former Harper’s editor and current curator of Lapham’s Quarterly.