If 2016 has shown us anything, it’s that journalists can’t afford to live in bubbles. We can be a self-reinforcing bunch, so we are surprised when “mainstream America” is unfamiliar with certain news events — or even something in the recent past that should still be part of the national consciousness. Just this month, we’ve seen some readers claim that Japanese Americans weren’t actually interned under harsh conditions during World War II.
That’s why, as an industry, we must do better at informing ourselves and providing proper context for our readers.
This means that news managers need to broaden their pool for hiring and promotion. We need journalists who can connect with readers in the heartland, not just because they are empathetic reporters but because they understand what it’s like to live and work there.
Diverse perspectives go far beyond race and ethnicity: It also means actively cultivating a newsroom whose journalists represent a broad cross section of America. We need more journalists who understand our military, more people who know about religions beyond Christianity, more people who know what it’s like to live in poverty. And we certainly need to continue to increase the number of journalists of color, particularly in top management.
Stories involving Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and immigration will have even more resonance as we transition to a new presidential administration. And stories from other parts of the world will need to be framed in a way that Americans will grasp their far-reaching relevance. When a seven-year-old girl in Aleppo becomes this era’s Anne Frank by using Twitter to share her daily struggles to survive, we see how social media, news, and ordinary people intersect.
More than anything, we’ll be faced with the reality that readers have evolved beyond one-size-fits-all news. To ensure that news reports have impact, we’ll need to connect with readers because we reflect the readers. And that starts with concerted efforts to hire, retain, and promote diverse viewpoints.
Doris Truong is the weekend homepage editor at The Washington Post.
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
David Weigel A test for online speech
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
An Xiao Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators