We are allegedly far beyond the era of the absolute Chinese wall between editorial and business, that time when it was unheard of for the newsroom to speak of collaborations with what was generically known as “the business side” (or “commercial” for the British media). There was a firm barrier between the money and the output — rightfully protecting the journalism from any external commercial pressures. But it was also part of the culture and even a point of pride. Us and them. That cultural barrier has actually persisted in many news organizations. Often journalists can’t actually identify colleagues in marketing, advertising, business development, strategy, analytics, customer service, or even product, or have much sense of what they actually do. (Communications is different — those people can get you exposure!)
But next year, I predict, this cultural difference will really (finally) start to abate. Protection of the autonomy and impartiality of news has never been more central, and it is more than ever a foundation of quality journalism in all of our newsrooms. But what is dissolving — and will continue to dissolve at an accelerating pace next year — is the impermeable border between the seemingly foreign regions of a news organization.
As more and more publishers shift toward subscription and membership, the word “revenue” is making its way — and will increasingly be welcomed — into morning news conferences and planning meetings.
Journalists — traditional reporters and editors, not just the hybrids working in the “growth,” “digital,” and “engagement” spaces — are beginning to get acquainted with the concept of product development and what a product manager does, learning how to develop concepts collaboratively and with defined outcomes in mind (great journalism andrevenue). Journalists are beginning to actively seek out audience insights from data analysts and customer research people that can help them get better at doing the thing they always thought they were doing: targeting readers interested in their journalism. (Andwho might also pay for it.)
Editors and reporters are getting acquainted with marketing strategies and the powers of alignment, and coming awake to the merits of all these other levers of impact and engagement that they never knew they could access (through that colleague they always see in the elevator but never knew what she did). Now they know these colleagues can help them reach the readers most likely to get value out of their work. (Andhelp monetize it.)
There is already a growing exchange between editorial and all the other parts of the organization. Fruitful and respectful collaborations that start with the realization that we all share the same objectives — or, at least, are able to agree to shared objectives that we can define together. It’s no coincidence that just as newsrooms are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of protecting high-quality, trustworthy journalism, so they are becoming open to new conversations about its viability — and the role that editorial can play in building that. And reaching out to experts in their own organizations who can help them.
We talk a lot about trust in news, and less about our own trust in our own news organizations. I predict — and I certainly hope — that 2019 will be the year when trust and collaboration within and across our own organizations becomes the obvious way forward.
Renée Kaplan is head of audience engagement at the Financial Times.
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
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Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail