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