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