In 2017, newsrooms will finally push back against Facebook. We will create our own community spaces on and offline — not to replicate the social media giant, but to carve out a lucrative niche around what Facebook does badly and journalism does best. We’ll do it because it’s our best chance of survival.
We’ll do it because:
Do you believe that there are smart, interesting people among your audience, people who could be potential sources or even potential hires? If so, how could you find them?
Up to now, as an industry, we’ve mostly failed to give our audiences any real avenues to engage with us on an ongoing basis, beyond letters to the editor and an occasional Google form. Even when people do reach out, we keep no record of it, and a few days later we’ve mostly forgotten who they are.
There are exceptions. ProPublica has created a database of more than 3,350 stories about Agent Orange by reaching out and creating a sustained community around the topic.
Earlier this year, the Financial Times hired a new columnist after a comment he left on their site went viral. Last year, The Atlantic named Yoni Appelbaum as politics editor — he was originally hired after being spotted as a talented commenter on one of their blogs.
These are rare examples. Due to a vicious circle of abuse and underinvestment, many journalists proudly say that they never read the comments on their work. In a forthcoming study The Coral Project has commissioned from the Engaging News Project at the University of Texas, more than 9,500 commenters across 20 news sites around the country were surveyed. 58 percent of respondents said they wished that journalists actually contributed in the comments. Better tools and a culture change are long overdue. (The Coral Project is working on both.)
This year, we’ve seen a lack of trust in news organizations increase as we’ve become worse at listening to what ordinary people are saying. While we lament our bubbles, a diverse audience that enjoys our work and wants to contribute is right in front of us, begging to be taken seriously. Why should our readers listen to us if we don’t listen to them?
A report this year in MIT Sloan Management Review, based on five years of research by Gal Oestreicher-Singer and Lior Zalmanson, draws a clear link between onsite community and a willingness of people to pay for services. We’re starting to see this being applied to journalism: technology news site The Information uses its strong comments section as a selling point to subscribers. Dutch news site De Correspondent runs its own speakers agency for its journalists.
Hosting community is also financially smart for those who include time on site in their key metrics. It should be no surprise that people who read and write comments spend longer on the page than those who just read the article. Advertisers take such numbers seriously. Do you?
Social media filter bubbles are real. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter aren’t incentivized to burst them — and even if they were, they structurally can’t have an opinion about what makes for an interesting or useful editorial contribution.
This is where journalism steps in. We’re all about identifying what is meaningful and relevant, not just socially optimized for clicks. We can set the terms for the discussion, and then focus our reporting based on the community’s areas of interest. We need to invite and find useful contributions across the ideological spectrum — and include them in our journalism. Facebook can’t do this. We can.
We need to take back ownership of the relationship with our community members. If we want people to stand up for our journalism, and to trust us again, we need to bring them closer to our work, to learn more about them, and to offer a range of ways to have a meaningful impact on what we do. This is not a nice-to-have any more.
The days of broadcasting from the top of the mountain are over. Our audiences need us, and we need them. In 2017, we will finally learn how to sidestep the big blue thumb, and get engaged.
Andrew Losowsky is project lead on The Coral Project.
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
David Weigel A test for online speech
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Carrie Brown We won’t do enough
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Andy Rossback The year of the user
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach