What the heck just happened?
In 2016, we kept asking that question as events moved beyond our ability to predict them. In 2017, we have to answer it. We might not like where that answer leads.
What the heck is happening? History matters, and we are watching it play out again in brutal fashion. People can’t tell real news from fake, while soft-focus profiles of neo-Nazis outnumber coverage of local education, and Facebook is looking for a news editor.
Journalism is a profession where being “in the know” has great social currency. It can also bring out the worst affects of insularity and condescension. Broad pronouncements over the fate of the country are made by closed circles of “experts” who live in the same three-block radius within maybe four cities, based on reading each other’s thinkpieces and imagined conversations with fictional Americans. We get constant explanations of the lives of those Americans who have been part of public life for centuries, but somehow can’t break into the double digits combined in any major newsroom. Newsrooms are shedding jobs left and right. Freelancers are barely surviving as legacy and new media platforms ebb and flow like the tides. Public trust in the media continues to plummet, and it’s not hard to see why.
Except that’s not the whole truth. The election results drove up subscriptions to several news outlets. Small cultural journals are creating amazing member-supported pieces. Good work is being recognized as good work, no matter where it originates. New faces and perspectives are completely reshaping where we go for news and what it is.
All of these things are true and none of them are the only truth, but we got here somehow and one thing is clear: Journalism must shift from claiming to have all the answers to being the ones with the skills to survey the different perspectives, match them to the facts, and connect the two with the worlds that people actually live in. The small monopoly of voices just don’t cut it anymore.
What the heck better happen?
This is the year that journalism stops crafting the history the profession wants, and deals with the history the profession has. If we don’t know what’s going on, it’s because we’re not listening to the people who do. If they don’t want to talk to us, then we have to figure out why.
How people feel about the media has changed the course of history. It’s doing it again. Journalism needs to face itself, before history does.
Sydette Harry is community lead on The Coral Project.
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
David Weigel A test for online speech
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no