In 2015, I predicted that this would be the year news organizations needed to get their ethical houses in order to build trust with audiences. “It doesn’t matter how much content they post on Snapchat, Instagram, or Twitter — if users don’t trust journalists, they won’t buy what news outlets are selling.”
It remains true today. But until and unless news organizations figure out how to build trusting relationships with users, nothing will change.
Currently, most — if not all — news organizations struggle to figure out who their existing users are, and they aren’t even close to knowing who their potential users are. What’s worse is that users don’t know us either, and many don’t seem to care. News organizations have been indifferent toward communities and audiences for so long that now communities and audiences are indifferent toward us.
So how do we fix this?
It’s all about relationships. Building them takes time, is expensive and is made even more difficult by the lack of trust between the American public and news organizations. Still, if anything is to change for the better in 2017, this is where we’ll have to start.
Happy New Year! Here’s to healthy relationship building in 2017.
Tracie Powell is founder of AllDigitocracy and a senior fellow with the Democracy Fund.
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
David Weigel A test for online speech
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Carrie Brown We won’t do enough
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach