Do you know how to get into the feed of a reader who distrusts, or hates, your news organization?
Many of us in the digital trenches of news have been engaged in a street fight for human attention for some time now. But that street fight has recently turned into something more consequential, more militarized.
It’s no coincidence that in the wash of fake news that emerged during the election, one of the alt-reality sites that buoyed our president-elect to victory is called Infowars. Their slogan: “There’s a war on for your mind!”
Indeed. The explosion of fact-check journalism was supposed to be a curative for these trends. It’s now somewhat clearer to most that facts aren’t enough to move people in an age of information saturation, distribution of news is an art that left the “front page” behind several years ago, and many people will reject uncomfortable facts when more pleasing and affirming “content” is available at the touch of a finger — in unlimited supply.
Placing true stories, engineered to exist in those feeds, will be essential work in the year ahead. Journalism is hard, honorable work with a simple mission: report what is true, fairly. While this mission remains essential and unchanged, 2017 will be the year when the best practitioners of the craft will wake to see that this mission has a new mandate: Journalists will finally dig in to understand how their stories travel in our information ecosystem, and will respond with new strategies to not only cover diverse groups and ideologies, but to reach them as well.
If facts fade, stories stick. Bigger narratives cling to the mind’s scaffolding in a way that isolated bits of data do not. In 2017, journalism will not only need to work harder to frame those narratives for readers, but the creators of that journalism will need to work harder at reaching all manner of people — technically, structurally and emotionally — if they hope to have a voice that matters.
Amy O’Leary is chief story officer at Upworthy.
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Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
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Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
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Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
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Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
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Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
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Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
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Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
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Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
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Katie Zhu The year of minority media
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Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
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Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
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Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
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David Weigel A test for online speech
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Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
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Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
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Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
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Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
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Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click