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