While scrolling through my news feed a few weeks ago, I saw Facebook post with a few hundred shares. The woman who wrote the post shared a photo of her engagement ring, and told the kind of heartwarming story that excites viral news editors to no end: While she and her husband picked out a modest $130 ring at the store, a stranger made a rude comment about the size. Her post shared this story, with commentary on our toxic wedding culture. About a week later, almost every major news outlet covered the story.
The idea of user-generated content is nothing new. But UGC becoming the source, and regarded as news content for digital publishers, is something I predict we’ll see a lot more of in 2017. We won’t just get audiences’ or commenters’ opinions on topics and whip up a quick list. Brands will rely more on “trending” stories, or stories that the public themselves deem newsworthy, when weighing what to cover. Plenty of teams have trending editors already, but thanks to the growth of social as a news tool, the practice is becoming less of a strategy for pageviews or viral “quick hits,” but a necessity to the newsgathering process.
A prime example of this is after the election, when the private Facebook group filled with progressive Hillary Clinton supporters dubbed Pantsuit Nation began ramping up. People posted everything from their personal feelings to reports of hate crimes. Then a woman shared a photo of herself and Hillary Clinton taking a walk. That post wasn’t just a viral photo, it became news: This was one of the few and first public sightings of Clinton. The post made headlines once again. Social accounts began to pop up after that titled “HRC in the Wild,” which allowed the public to post pictures of Clinton out and about.
Twitter’s hashtag trend kicked off this era of UGC-as-news, but with Facebook’s Signal, more Facebook groups created to give the public a voice (i.e. Pantsuit Nation, Bernie Sanders’ Dank Meme Stash), and even the early-detection tweet mining tool Dataminr gaining popularity, people who normally wouldn’t tell their stories will now have their own audience, who will continue to serve as a “newsworthy” litmus test.
In 2017, journalists will not only will take this new way of newsgathering seriously, but create strategies and even teams to involve UGC in their process more than ever before.
Mandy Velez is editorial director of Revelist.
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
David Weigel A test for online speech
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news