I worked with a newspaper editor earlier in my career, a lovely person who occasionally caused me to sigh deeply. I would work for days or weeks on a story, getting every fact confirmed. Just when I seemingly had reached the home stretch, I’d draw her in the editor pool and the tortuous process would begin.
Did I really mean this word? Or would another word be more precise? Had I considered this nuance? Could I please rewrite this thought to make sure there was no doubt in what I was trying to say? Over and over the copy we’d go, with deadline looming, every sentence seemingly requiring an answer to one of her queries. In my mind, I was focused on the big picture and the work she wanted me to do felt nitpicky.
In the 20 years since, my editor’s kind of careful attention to detail has slowly become less prevalent in daily (can we use that phrase anymore?) journalism. Real-time reporting drives much of our business now: the scoop, the hot take, the analysis, and the next-day speculation. Who has time to parse words in between reporting and tweeting and Facebook Live-ing?
Actually, listeners and readers and viewers do. They are paying attention, perhaps closer attention than ever before to the journalism we are all working as such fast pace to produce. Yes, many news consumers just read the headlines. But they are parsing every word in them, too. When they notice something sloppy, they tell you so, publicly. And when pollsters come around to ask whether mainstream, nonpartisan journalism is trustworthy, they tell them, too.
“Denier” vs. “skeptic.” “Lie” vs. “unfounded.” “Alt-Right” v. “white nationalist.” I sometimes tire of today’s finger-pointing over language and the focus on the labels, which can detract from the big picture, the underlying facts and nuance that will help us, the news consumers, understand the full scope of a story. And yet, those nitpicky words are really at the heart of what the audience wants: precise journalism where every detail has been carefully thought through and held up to a standard.
It’s not terribly sexy, but I hope 2017 is the year when journalism, as it seeks to rebuild trust with some in the audience, puts a renewed emphasis on the fundamentals, despite all the time pressures. When facts will be double-checked. When deep reporting (and openness to new narratives) will wrest back some of the prominence placed on analysis. When news analysts will “show their work,” explaining how they came to their conclusions. When needed corrections will be posted quickly and prominently. When ethics policies and internal standards will be adhered to in every story and interview. When transparency will flourish. And yes, when each and every word will be parsed, as painful as that process might be.
Elizabeth Jensen is NPR’s ombudsman.
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
David Weigel A test for online speech
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers