This is going to sound darker than it is, but this is my general take on digital media after 2016: Forests need to burn to regrow.
Layoffs are terrible. Endings are gutting. But the drive for scale has made so many places way, way too big. And there just aren’t enough good jobs to keep everyone working, satisfied, succeeding.
So what’s going to happen in 2017?
Prediction No. 1: Some digital nomads, young, middle-aged, and old, will leave journalism altogether and go into different industries. In the last month, I’ve talked to a number of laid-off and/or miserable writers and editors tired of jumping from promising digital news upstart (or well-funded expansion/reinvention) to the next. In each case, the same cycle is repeated: investment, growth, the hiring of writers with big social footprints (to bring their followers — which, by the way, is not how a brand grows an audience!), the setting of impossible metrics, demands to increase video views. STOP! Change of strategy, layoffs, reassignments, re-orgs, possible sale or IPO, lose/change identity.
I’ve been through this cycle myself four times in the past six years. Based on my own experience, you can get through between 9 and 18 months before the end of what you built is clearly near. And by “end” I don’t mean that your company is going out of business — it’s just going to try and reinvent itself, already and again. The second you get going on one strategy, the directive comes to shift, your colleagues (and possibly you) are out of work, and all you have to show are a few good stories, a successful experiment or two, some unhappy and anxious writers you are begging to post three times a day, and a whole bunch of frustration.
The writers and editors I talked to are exhausted by this hamster wheel — even if they are in their 20s! So, in this new Trump world, they are contemplating nonprofits, city council jobs, labor-organizing jobs, LSATs. The same thing that drove them into journalism — the desire to do good work that has impact on the world we live in — will drive them out of the industry that, in their own instances, has ceased to value their contributions, or give them a runway to success.
Prediction No. 2: Some of these journalists will end up in the agency world. The work, of course, will be called content, not journalism. But agencies will make things that aren’t ads that have news value and that change the way we look at the world. This may be more relevant for film and video journalists than print — at first. But that won’t last. These ex-journalists will play with forms, and ways of storytelling, and do it outside the pressures of a newsroom. And my guess is they will have fun, too.
(Note: What’s wrong with the newsroom anyway?, you ask. Well, somehow, despite building more collaborative, open spaces with no offices and glass walls, we still function as siloed institutions where it’s almost impossible to develop ideas across specialties. Reporters still don’t know their counterparts in design, or development. The C-suite execs may have weekly staff meetings where they find things they are doing in their own areas dovetail, but the bulk of people charged with coming up with ideas don’t have ways to talk to one another, inspire one another, create with one another. Slack is great, but it’s not a cure-all. Some companies have tried to address these issues with interdisciplinary task forces to take on certain projects, or brainstorm ideas, etc. But they never last. People have day jobs, responsibilities, to achieve scale. And a task force is always just an add-on of time suckage that no one wants to prioritize — especially the brass, who want the clicks. Get back to your desk! This has to change. Innovation can’t just happen in the “innovation” group. And we can’t just make beautiful open physical spaces and expect proximity to do the work, either.)
Prediction No. 3: Voices will realize they don’t need big media to make a living. By “voices” I mean those writers with huge social footprints desired by every scale outlet in the country. They may make brand deals. They may find VC investment in specific projects and ideas, or do an angel round to start a newsletter. They may find a nonprofit to fund their trip to Iraq, and a studio to help cut the pilot for their video series. They could meet a rich person at a dinner party, and that person could write them a check! They will value creative control of their voice, copyright, and ideas over a 360˚ big-ticket deal that sounds amazing and pays them enough to go on a nice vacation but prevents them from ever getting anything done the way they want. Because they still answer to the (white) man.
These voices will change the media world in the process, and show the next generation that they can chart their own paths, too. They will go step by step, and will listen to the desires of their followers and, hopefully, support one another. And more startups looking to seed ideas, to develop them and shape them, will pop up to support these creators, too, and help turn their best dreams into sustainable realities that can nurture a wider, more diverse world of great stories, and fuck with old, dead models in the process.
2016 sucked, and 2017 is going to be a rough year. But at the end, things we didn’t expect will grow. And journalists, even working in different industries, will do important work. And that will be beautiful.
Hillary Frey is co-chief creative officer at Matter Studios.
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David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
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Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
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Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
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Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
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Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
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