Things are going to get worse before they get better.
Consolidation, mergers, and layoffs will continue to decimate existing local news organizations as stockholders demand ever increasing financial returns. This will leave even more communities without critical civic information.
On the other hand, local TV news is projected to see increases in revenue over the next decade but that doesn’t mean much. Once the hedge funds are done with the newspapers, they’ll come for the broadcasters. Profit seeking never ends. It finds new resources and markets to exhaust.
In the case of local newspapers and TV stations, artificial intelligence will help capitalists wring every cent out of the news industry, putting more and more journalists out of work.
But there is opportunity in this devastation.
In ecological terms, we are in what is called secondary succession. When ecosystems are disturbed by fire, flood, or overfarming, the plant species that replace what was lost grow from what remains under the new conditions. The journalism ecosystem has been devastated by capitalism, but not destroyed. And the next ecosystem has already begun to emerge.
Community information organizations operating under collectivist principles are taking root. Where previously news organizations produced communities to sell their attention, these new organizations are cultivating communities to meet needs. As capitalism consumes us, these new journalism-community organization hybrids are leveraging a collective process to meet collective needs and build the next ecosystem.
They are our future. Cultivate them.
Simon Galperin is the customer success lead at GroundSource and the director of the Community Information Cooperative.
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Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
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Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
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Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
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Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
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M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
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Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
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Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
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Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
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Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
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Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
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Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities