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