Among the predictions published in this series last year, none proved more prescient than Rachel Sklar’s “Women are Going to Get Loud.” It’s as if Rachel got an advance copy of Time’s Person of the Year issue — really advance.
The #MeToo movement has been an efficient juggernaut, blasting open decades of workplace hostility and harassment, and nowhere has it gotten more attention than in the field of media. (So much for “report the story, don’t become the story.”) Certainly, media is not the only industry so plagued by misogyny — there are others where it’s even more widespread. Nonetheless, it’s the media’s job to expose these outbreaks and it can’t even begin to help in that regard until it puts on its own oxygen mask.
The main consequences of this reckoning have been terminations, resignations, leaves of absence. And so it happens that there are suddenly a whole lot of vacancies in leadership roles across many media organizations. Already we’re seeing some of these roles filled by women. Expect that trend to accelerate and expand. There’s a surfeit of female talent that’s been sitting too long on the bench.
It never made sense for journalism to skew so heavily male at its highest ranks for so long. Media corporations can’t say with a straight face that it’s a “pipeline problem” with regards to women eager to study, work, and lead in journalism, as technology titans feebly do. According to Poynter, journalism schools award diplomas to women at a more than 2 to 1 ratio. Per ASNE, that ratio somehow flips in terms of newsroom supervisory roles, with women comprising only 37 percent. Media is storytelling, communication, information dissemination…we’re not talking about the defense industry or investment banking. These are skills women have long been stereotyped for having mastered — and yet, haven’t yet been deemed authoritative enough in to be awarded a mantle of leadership. Isn’t it ironic?
That all ends next year. My prediction is not solely that media leadership will be feminized, but that news itself will take on a new, more feminine, tone. No, this doesn’t mean more articles on weight loss and beauty trends. Instead, it means that women will be seen as reliable sources and the sexism embedded into articles about women’s issues and female public figures (“Who were they wearing?”) won’t make it past first edit. It also means we can expect newsroom resources dedicated to uncovering stories of other underserved and underreported communities. This means we can expect more two-way communication between storytellers and readers — something more authentic and constructive than a comments section.
I expect the female media takeover will bring also bring a novel remedy to the phenomenon of so-called fake news and the overall stratification of media along ideological lines. Don’t ask me how I know — it’s just my woman’s intuition. 2017 wasn’t pretty for our industry, but there’s hope for 2018. This time next year, “content is queen” will roll right off the tongue.
Jennifer Coogan is chief content officer of Newsela.
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Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
AX Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
David Skok Finding an information-life balance