In the prophetic words of Kanye West, “No one man should have all that power.” Welcome to fear and loathing in Trump’s America. Fear and loathing not only by the American citizenry, but also by the media whose job it is to cover him. Meanwhile, trust of journalists and the media industry at large is at an all-time low. Oh and hey, how about that fake news?! We’ve got “trust issues,” to quote Drake.
Our industry is in somewhat of an existential free fall. Will the fourth estate continue to exist as we know it? (We’ve been asking this since the dawn of digital.) To cover or not to cover Trump’s tweets? (Some of them, obviously.) Does my work even matter? (Yes — but not all of it.) Is the filter bubble real? (Yes.) Do I live in a filter bubble? (Probably.) Am I a filter bubble? (Existential, can’t answer that for you.)
Marty Baron says to do your job. Jack Shafer says starve the troll. Both of these are smart and worthwhile, and there are many others that will follow. This is just the beginning of our journey into a very heady and navel-gazing time in which we spend a majority of our energy recalibrating our relationship not only with the new administration, but also with our audiences and ourselves.
2017 is the year we grapple with trust issues and navigate power. To get ahead of the next wave of takes, I’m laying out a few questions for fodder. Some of them we definitely need to ask, and some of them we have to solve.
A sample of questions we should ask and answer over the next year:
This obviously is not an exhaustive list (tweet me your own!) but I believe the bigger question, once we answer these, is how then do we do it? The devil is in the details and relies on execution of our collective vision. America has spoken (sans the popular vote) and it wants something different — different people in office, different people reporting what happens in that office, different voices for them to trust. If you’re looking for a silver lining, this is it: Navigating these new mandates the audience has passed down will create pressures and opportunities to try making news differently. Crisis of conscience or not, it’s time to meet the moment and ask yourself the tough questions, journos.
Cory Haik is chief strategy officer at Mic.
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
An Xiao Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
David Weigel A test for online speech
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again