It’s going to get harder to look away. It’s also going to get harder to get closer.
As I type this, Syrian citizens are on Facebook, saying their goodbyes. They’re also on Twitter, saying their goodbyes. For all I know, they’re on Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more, uploading tragedy one message at a time. And yet, the world can’t seem to do anything other than stare.
This past year, news consumers were faced again and again with the dilemma: Do I look? Is it ethical to watch someone livestreaming a police shooting? Is it ethical not to watch? Often, I’d bargain with myself to avoid having the images floating around my head. If I read the stories, then I won’t have to watch the body camera footage. I don’t know if that’s right; some days, it was just too much to take in. With violent or upsetting imagery, there’s also the danger of empathy fatigue. The sheer volume of material, many of it taken by machines (drones, surveillance cameras) makes it hard to stay engaged.
Journalists and the public have a responsibility to bear witness — but then what? In the coming year, I hope we can develop a better framework for processing this information, much of it visual, all of it heartbreaking. We should understand the risks of watching violent or traumatic imagery, and balance that against the need to look at the world as it is, not how we wish it would be. There needs to be calls to action, or at least discussion, that give meaning to the reams of primary documents.
A few years ago, a boss told me about a focus group that explained to him what was broken about journalism. It’s not enough, said a survey respondent, for the local paper to just report that a building is on fire. If you’re standing there as part of the community, you have to help put out the fire. At the time, I scoffed: There’s often no clear way to put out those fires, and it’s not the journalist’s job to make that choice for the public. That was before I could see, say, Facebook Live from inside the fire, or read the last text messages of the terrified people trapped inside. I wonder now if we can afford to take that position.
Reyhan Harmanci is an editor at First Look Media.
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
An Xiao Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
David Weigel A test for online speech
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection