In 2016, the news-consuming public was treated to a steady diet of fear, anger and despair. 2017 promises to be filled with anxiety-inducing stories for many Americans. As a result, 2017 will be the year when some of them decide to tune out.
To be clear, this is not good for democracy. The health of our republic depends on a well-informed citizenry. But the steady drumbeat of anger, violence, bullying, terror, war, despair, division, and fear will push people to seek out inspiration, meaning, and a reasoned exchange of ideas. News organizations will finally understand that in 2017, you can’t just identify problems or events and disseminate them to news consumers. You have to offer your readers and listeners and viewers a sense of possibility.
Our readers, viewers and listeners see themselves as part of a community. News organizations need to acknowledge that they are a gathering place for a community. The members of these communities do not want to despair or feel disempowered. Most of them want a sense of agency in the world.
It means that more news organizations need to think beyond the daily headlines and about the bigger human picture — the things that animate us, the ideas that inspire us, the people who change the world for the better. Once we start to think about bigger things beyond just the news, we will serve our audiences in a much richer and more meaningful way.
Guy Raz is host and cocreator of NPR’s TED Radio Hour and How I Built This.
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
David Weigel A test for online speech
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
An Xiao Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism