The 2016 presidential election exposed racial fault lines to reveal a deeply fractured country, with citizens who are strangers to one another. We’ve been here before, but what will we say now about race in America?
For some, the work will be what it has always been: attempting to right wrongs by telling the stories of the unseen and unheard. We know now that must also include white people — but not only the ones at the center of the Recent Unpleasantness.
While much has been made about the angry Rust Belt voters we did not know, there was another group we failed to cover — the voters we did know: our neighbors, friends and relatives who made choices we didn’t expect or, according to the polls, didn’t believe they would on Election Day. Talking to them could also yield new insights, if we’re ready to lay down old assumptions. And with renewed interest in the “inner city” — expressed by the president-elect on the campaign trail — must come a renewed commitment to journalism that takes a view of these communities that is more focused on their humanity than body counts.
Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 race riots that roiled cities like Newark, Detroit, and Cleveland. In their wake, the country asked how and why racial tensions exploded after years of unrest and in the wake of some racial progress. The result of that inquiry was the Kerner Report, commissioned the same year by President Lyndon Johnson. Completed in 1968, the report described a nation “moving toward two societies…separate and unequal.”
Its lessons remain salient, urgent, and befitting the moment as we ponder America’s next chapter and the future of our country’s journalism. Among them: to show up in communities, and not just in times of crisis; to report on the daily lives of minorities in a way that normalizes them to the rest of America; and that newsrooms must hire decision-makers, not just reporters, who are reflective of the communities we cover.
Errin Haines Whack covers urban affairs for the Associated Press.
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
David Weigel A test for online speech
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix