“Nobody has any attention span anymore. Least of all anyone under 40.” Until a few years ago, it seemed that virtually all media watchers, and media makers, agreed on this. Among the most powerful gatekeepers, anyway, the consensus seemed solid.
One of the most gratifying revelations to emerge from the podcast boom of the last few years is that the above article of faith was dead wrong. It’s an especially gratifying discovery if, like me, you love to produce long-form, in-depth, documentary audio.
Yes, the trend took off with Serial’s first season. Twelve episodes, “one story told week by week,” 100 million downloads in no time, etc., etc. Everyone knows that Serial’s success unleashed a new podcast stampede. More specifically, for my purposes here, it threw open the doors to the podcast series. Eight, ten, fourteen parts, a bunch of hours in total — the audio nonfiction (and sometimes fiction) equivalent of a good book, or of the bingeable Netflix series so many of us are burning through. Podcast listeners — who in fact skew younger than in most other media — seem to be saying: Yes, thank you. Take me on a journey. We’re going to take our time, dig into corners, get into the weeds? Sign me up.
So, we’ve got the many true crime series, each show or season tackling a single case (In the Dark, Dirty John, Empire on Blood, Atlanta Monster, Last Seen), while others dive into past political scandals (Slow Burn, Bag Man). In addition, podcasters are making series that explore personal journeys (First Day Back, How to Be a Girl) and historical and social themes (UnCivil, Caught, Scene on Radio’s Seeing White and MEN). There’s fiction and quasi-fiction (Homecoming, The Shadows), and limited series turning on a creative, imaginative device (Everything is Alive).
It turns out that people — well, lots of people, anyway — are hungry for substance. Our attention spans are quite intact, ready, and willing.
My prediction: More podcast series in 2019. (No kidding.) They’ll keep getting better, smarter, deeper, and more varied. Thank god and the inventors of the podcast. Bring ‘em on.
John Biewen is audio program director at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and host/producer of Scene on Radio.
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Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance