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.
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Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
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Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
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Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
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Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
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Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
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Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
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Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
David Weigel A test for online speech
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
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Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
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Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
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Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
An Xiao Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
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Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
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