Winter is here.
I felt the bite of the wind most deeply when I got the email from another parent who had been on my daughter’s playground the day after that terrifying night:
The girls were standing in a circle
Comparing skin color
And deciding who was safe
And who was not.
These were first graders.
In Oakland.
On 11/9.
Day One of Trump.
I broke down. Terrified.
Was this my country now?
Nightmare. Sheer terror. Please wake me up. Wake up!
This is not my America.
But it was. I was awoken.
This is how it feels to be terrified of authorities.
To feel the machines of a totalitarian state begin to screech and turn and target you.
To look around at your fellow citizens and not know who is friend and who is foe.
This is how many of my fellow Americans who do not look like me feel every. single. day.
America, the myth. Shattered.
That woke me up.
No time to cry. No time to panic.
I was made for this moment, and so were you.
It’s the time to fight.
The time to courageously risk our privilege.
The time not just to resist, but to oppose.
Each with our own superpower from our own point of leverage.
From in front of the camera,
To the newsrooms of New York City,
To the garages of Silicon Valley.
Those who flinch will fall in disgrace. Heroes no more.
But those who stay clear eyed in their values and shout into the face of a creeping normalization of what we CANNOT let become normal — will rise.
It’s that. Or we lose everything we stand for as Americans.
An informed and connected public is the bedrock of democracy. But with our journalistic institutions under threat economically, politically, and culturally, that bedrock is cracking.
We need to strengthen our media ecosystem.
The seeds of the next great media institutions will be planted this year by courageous entrepreneurs who make the leap to build ventures that speak truth to power, close the empathy gap, and take a radically inclusive approach to amplifying the voices of all Americans.
Winter may be here but inside the fire is rekindled anew. Our purpose is clear.
This is the Year of The Rebelpreneur.
Corey Ford is managing partner of Matter.
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
David Weigel A test for online speech
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis