2017 will be the year we elevate minorities in news. I’m not predicting this because I’m an optimist (quite the opposite), but because it has to happen, for all of our sakes.
Let’s make 2017 the year we finally speak up for what we know to be true and stand up for the things we believe in. We need the right people in charge to ensure this is the case. We must elevate more minorities in newsrooms to positions of power and decision making.
This year, we saw more underrepresented groups being hired as writers, making media, and finding their voice. We’ve seen and felt their presence other platforms — black teens made culture on Vine, black women fueled worldwide movements like Black Lives Matter, and #BlackTwitter showed up making memes, vernacular, and blessing us with things like the Mannequin Challenge. That value cannot be understated, but it’s also not enough. As the death of Vine has shown us, simply being an individual creator on a platform isn’t always enough, since you’re at the behest of the powers that be — and those powers are mostly always white.
Despite hiring more minority writers, the power structure in legacy news organizations is still largely controlled by the same types of people. We need more Dodai Stewarts, Lydia Polgreens, and Elaine Welteroths leading editorial teams. We as an industry must invest in black women, Latina women, Muslim women, Asian women, Native American women, members of the LGBT community, and more.
Teen Vogue has shown us the way. Their incisive political coverage has shocked many who believe the magazine to only cover the best hairstyles or nail polish for teen girls, but after Welteroth took over as editor in May, Teen Vogue’s editorial strategy was steered to tackle the heady topics of racism, feminism, activism, and the rest of the -isms, covering these topics better than most traditional news organizations. They’ve demonstrated that when a black woman is in charge and gives younger women the room to write what they believe in, good things happen.
The landscape of news is still dominated by a homogenous whiteness, especially as you ascend the ranks. So much of liberal white media was shocked at the outcome of the election, while minorities — like blacks and Muslims — have had enough lived experience in this country to know not to underestimate the allure of white supremacy.
We need more minorities in the news landscape of 2017 and beyond. But not as token identity politics writers, or the reporter who can cover Beyoncé or Ferguson with “authenticity.” Structural change must happen. In 2017, the news industry has to change the structure to support minorities, to elevate the work they do, to help them grow and translate their skills into a career, and to ascend to positions of leadership.
So on the one end, 2017 will bring us legacy news organizations who recognize this and make adjustments to their internal power structures. But we’ll also see more minority new media ventures, from people tired of chasing the seemingly always widening gap to the top levels of leadership. Not all of these will survive. And in an increasingly consolidated media landscape, it’s become harder and harder for anyone — not just minorities — to build and own their own companies. We as an industry must invest in marginalized groups, because minority-owned media provides an important balance to the mass market stuff, and the need for minority-owned news businesses to shape understanding and showcase different cultures is more profound than ever.
Readers need that nuance in perspective, we’ll come to rely on a more diversified cross section of news leadership that truly reflects the changing face of American society. Minorities leading news will celebrate, reflect, and shape culture, and cultural change is the precursor to political change.
Minorities are so wildly underestimated by the world at large. In 2017, we’ll see new editors, new leaders, new ventures challenging that preconception. Our future depends on it.
Katie Zhu is a product manager and engineer at Medium.
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
David Weigel A test for online speech
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Carrie Brown We won’t do enough
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers