This is more of a plea than a prediction.
At one point in my career, as I laid off another round of journalists as the editor of a regional newspaper in North Carolina, I had an epiphany. I had to help, or at least try my damnedest, to keep journalism alive rather than being a journalist myself. So I made the seemingly too-rare leap to the “business side.”
Flash forward a few years, when a senior colleague — who I otherwise admire greatly — told me the most important thing an editor can do is “keep the lawnmower out of the rose bushes” — a reference to fending off the evil “business side” from doing god-knows-what damage to the newsroom.
Ugh.
In 2017, I hope our industry — or at least more of it — kills the damning cultural vestige of church vs. state. Let’s start by abandoning references to “sides.”
Like many concepts that have outlived their usefulness, the wall between business and news — intended to keep advertisers’ interests from influencing news coverage decisions — was taken to absurd limits, creating a culture of divisiveness that lingers on today. And the division of labor between the two, while efficient in the monopolistic era of print, now incapacitates many news organizations that are trying to figure out how to handle necessarily blurry roles. Where should audience growth responsibility live — with the newsroom or the business? What about product? Technology? Analytics? Testing? Design? User experience?
This isn’t about org charts and reporting lines. And it’s not, for the love of god, about merging the editor and publisher jobs to cut costs. The “side” thing is much more real and tangible and destructive. It’s about how we behave, how we work together, how we tackle shared problems. It’s about how we see journalism as a greater good and, yes, how we do everything we can — appropriately, responsibly — to make money. It’s about teamwork. The term “sides,” on the other hand, implies opposition, like armies or tennis players.
When folks with P&L responsibility — publishers, GMs, marketers, sales reps, finance leaders — refuse to work collaboratively with their newsroom colleagues, we lose. When journalists refuse to understand the basic economics of the business — or play an active role in contributing to those economics — we lose.
Some startups of late aim to be built differently. And some initiatives at “legacy” news organizations preach this, too.
So, that’s my plea for 2017: Let’s lose the ego and the control and the “that’s-not-my-job” mentality. Let’s burn down the artificial divide between people who make money and people who spend it. Let’s be one, united in our pursuit of important, community- or world-changing journalism and smart, effective business practices to support it.
But I’ll settle for a baby step: No more “sides.”
Tim Griggs is an independent media consultant and advisor and former publisher of The Texas Tribune.
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
David Weigel A test for online speech
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
An Xiao Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe