Legacy outlets hold the advantage when it comes to the two most pressing issues: transparency and investigative journalism. Those “old school” companies will make bold business moves against newer organizations that they couldn’t win when the game was tilted more toward sheer scale.
Those who can articulate and help readers understand who we are as a society will now break out of academic salons and the literary set. These reporters don’t just mirror readers’ own views and are accessible both in language and platforms.
The investigative arms race continues while media companies continue to face financial struggles. As younger news organizations focus less on investigative units and many traditional organizations cut back those teams, this new emphasis means news organizations will need to find ways to compensate for those resources by cutting elsewhere and/or maximizing their existing manpower and resources.
Megan H. Chan is director of digital operations at The Washington Post.
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
An Xiao Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
David Weigel A test for online speech
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content