It is an extraordinary time and, as history demonstrates, times of unpredictability and flux are when tried and true forms for human expression are broken and expanded. Think Brahms, who ribboned his melodies across bar lines, shaking off the constraints of measured beats, helping to move out of the classical and into the romantic periods of musical expressionism. There’s the painter Agnes Martin, who carried her compulsive grid making over decades into pure illuminations of the ineffable — representations of “beauty, innocence, happiness,” blurring the line between abstract expressionism and minimalism. Or NPR’s first program director Bill Siemering, who created a new magazine form he dubbed All Things Considered in 1971, opening the way for headline news of national concern — a violent turn in a Vietnam war protest — to sit alongside uniquely defining American moments happening, for example, in a barber’s chair in Ames, Iowa.
Transcendent makers are as much defining of their time as they are idiosyncratic in their craft. They also have the power to give permission and courage to others to push further and test limits.
Journalism is expanding, its rules being broken and remade. The sacred tenants of truth, balance, and objectivity are considered by many on all points of the spectrum to be relative, subject to interpretation. We have a stimulating flux between technological ingenuity opening space for new social and digital narrative forms and, simultaneously, a push beyond limitations of physical space, with a frontier of viable new platforms opening where people are living each day. This physical, “street” platform is rich with opportunity to change craft and change the story.
We now understand the 2016 presidential election to be a catalyst. I recently asked Tom Webster of Edison Research what he learned from their polling. He described a nation that is not so much white or black, or blue or red, but comprised of homogeneous pockets: many, many pods of one-minded people; where, for example, “not a single vote was cast for Mitt Romney in the last election.” Trump’s team orchestrated with precision a plan to target and be the voice for those groups who, it seems apparent, feel sidelined, who exist outside the bounds of identity politics. This understanding is helpful for those of us now determined to reflect a more inclusive American story.
Change is in the hands of organizations to some degree, but real and enduring change begins in the making of story and in the collective work of individuals who are adapting their craft across formats, technologies, and platforms. How to best direct and support the fantastic talent diaspora underway to involve ordinary people in new ways? Here are a few guideposts:
The power of media is the power of reflecting human experience. If enlightenment is what we seek to deliver, it’s helpful to recognize the paradox of these times: that we seek to enlighten not only to those living in those discreet pods Edison points out, but to those people already familiar with our work, enlightening them to worlds just up the road. In this way, through new platforms we open in physical space, and guided by our deepest human instincts of fairness, balance, objectivity, with the courage to love, we make story that pulls from one side, to the other, bringing disparate and divided parts of our communities together into an integrated whole. To tie. To bind. Indeed to heal.
Sue Schardt is CEO of AIR and executive producer of Localore: Finding America.
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
An Xiao Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
David Weigel A test for online speech
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
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 Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Andrew Haeg The year of listening