Remember the early days of the web, where it seemed like anything was possible? When anyone with half an idea could start a GeoCities page and build a following for their extensive collection of MIDI music? When Facebook was the place that you could connect with people who shared your class schedule and exchange notes from that lecture you missed? We naively thought that the future would build on these early good-faith interpersonal connections to create a global, interconnected community.
Instead, what we ended up with were social platforms that reinforced isolation, siloing, filter bubbles, and groupthink. The partisan divide is growing wider, and it’s in large part because these systems are sorting us into clusters that are homogeneous — we no longer understand one another because we have become invisible to one another.
As these platforms have aimed to optimize for “time spent” and “likes” rather than meaningful engagement and discussion, the content that rises to the surface is often biased, pandering, or simply fake. This, in turn, has reinforced the worldview of those who simply believe that all news, regardless of its source, is untrustworthy.
And yet we know that there is a hunger for real stories told transparently and honestly. In 2018, I believe that we’ll begin the long process of rebuilding trust in the institution of the fourth estate —
and in turn, the media will help to renew our trust and connections with our fellow citizens.
It all starts with transparency. Especially on digital platforms, it’s essential that news consumers truly understand the full context for the stories that they’re seeing — sourcing, viewpoint, past reporting, etc. Not just transparency around the stories themselves, but also transparency around the algorithms that that invisibly control the stories that we see on social networks and aggregators.
This past year, some progress has been made on those fronts. News organizations have become more attentive to providing better “explainers” and cross-linking to provide a wider view of the stories that they are telling. Facebook, finally beginning to realize their unintentional complicity in bad-faith information distribution, has begun to make strides in better identifying news sourcing and blocking ads that spread false news stories. And, most excitingly to me, the Trust Project has gone live with a series of indicators that publications can encode into the metadata of their pages to help aggregation partners — including Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Bing — display the most relevant signifiers of news quality to their audiences.
In the next year, those of us who work on the digital product side of the news business will need to challenge ourselves on how we can continue to build platforms that foster transparency, accountability, and community-building. We will support our colleagues in the newsroom in telling the stories that matter in ways that are impactful and relevant. Ultimately, I believe that we will convince the public that there’s nothing fake about the reporting coming from our organizations.
Dan Newman is the deputy creative director at NPR.
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Mariano Blejman News games rule
AX Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog