What should happen

• Newsroom bosses should more formally articulate that the role of a journalist in their newsroom in 2013 now includes “the responsibility for bringing more digital audiences to his or her journalism.”



• Newsrooms should pivot from simply rewarding the creation of great content for digital audiences to rewarding the creation of great experiences for those audiences with that journalism.
• Media companies should stop ceding the relationship between their readers and advertising to third parties and agencies.
• Advertising innovation from media companies should become as critical as content innovation.
• “Mobile first” should become a newsroom mantra, as 30–50 percent of all digital news content consumption of most newsrooms shifts to mobile devices.

What will happen

• As display advertising revenues continue to fall amid plunging CPMs, U.S. newsrooms, already unable to stem newspaper revenue declines, will continue to shrink dramatically in overall numbers.
• Free news content from newspapers in the United States will become more scarce as more paywalls go up. “Me-too” paywalls, à la The New York Times’ paywall, will fail to save the business models of most metro newspapers, even if they add revenue streams.
• Newspaper consolidation will reach into the top tier of U.S. and U.K. newspapers.
• Google Glass, Square, Spreecast, Tout, YouTube, and Storify will grab a lot more of our attention, as will Cisco, Microsoft, and Intel.
• Media punditry on Twitter will continue unabated from those who don’t have to actually manage newsroom budgets or preserve newsroom jobs.