In 2019, we will be asking: “What do we do for people?” And I don’t mean writing some piece-of-corporate-hogwash mission statement full of buzzwords no one understands. I mean we’ll be getting clear about what it is you give your readers, listeners, or viewers. Journalism outlets, journalists, and everyone who works for an organization that does journalism needs to know what they are doing for people.
We talk constantly about pageviews and engagement rates, circulation stats and Nielsen ratings, subscriptions and donation rates, but all that happens when we successfully offer something to human beings that is of value to them. Knowing what we do for people also keeps us clear about why we are doing what we are doing. It helps us know whether we are doing things for the right reasons.
My team uses the NPR One algorithm to personalize and localize podcasts and public radio content on a variety of platforms, from smart speakers to cable boxes. Personalization gets a bad rap for creating filter bubbles, but editorial algorithms can also be used to try to widen people’s horizons, as well by exposing them to other points of view. The team that works on the NPR One systems is very clear that we use the algorithm to get our listeners a blend of localized news and a dose of serendipity that expands their understanding of their community, country, and world.
When I was in charge of content at Michigan Radio, we thought about our role as helping people “understand their state.” It was a literal statement about helping people understand what was happening in the state of Michigan, and a metaphorical statement about helping them understand their personal state as a citizen of the world. We chose what to cover, what to air, and what community conversations to participate in based on whether it would in fact help people understand their state.
Likewise, NPR, PRX, and a number of member stations are working on a project called “Culture of Journalism.” It’s an effort to ensure that everyone in public media is adhering to common ethics and values. But ultimately it’s really about encouraging stations and journalism creators in public media to do things because it helps create trustworthy journalism for our audience, rather than because it feathers our personal or organizational nests.
Our industry faces so many challenges — the political powers that be, financial pressures as our business models evolve, technology shifts, and new competition. In 2019, I’d argue the most powerful tool we have is knowing very clearly what it is we are trying to do for our audience. That way they too will be clear about what they can expect and value from us. Something that becomes even more important as people get their information by asking Alexa, Google, Siri, or Bixby for it.
Tamar Charney is managing editor of NPR One.
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Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
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Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces