Audience development and growth jobs blossomed in 2016. The need for smarter, deeper stats has been more important than ever, as our newsrooms have come to realize that unique viewer counts just aren’t going to cut it anymore in providing the time of information we need to create content that reaches and informs the masses. But in this rabid thirst for metrics, we’ve replaced the idea of a conversation with the old magazine and print adage of telling our readers what to think — rather than making the news a conversation and learning from the people we provide service to.
Look no further than 2016 election coverage to see the damage speaking at people, instead of with them, can cause. The results of the election, the lack of trust, and ultimately, the response in November, while a shock to many journalists, was not that crazy of an outcome to community managers and others who have spent a large part of this year listening to cultures unlike our own and outside of the newsroom bubble. When we make listening the job of one or two people in a newsroom instead of remembering that this is the cornerstone of journalism, we lose track of what readers are actually taking from our work, as well as the narrative we are sharing with them.
As journalists, we are exposed to a wealth of knowledge every day, but should never forget that there are millions of people outside of our newsrooms who are more of an expert in whatever we’re writing about — any topic, on any given day — than we will ever be. User-generated content has been one of the most blatant ways of keeping the dialogue between reader and writer open, but it’s also become an evergreen circus of curated quotes. We cannot assume that low-hanging fruit Q&As are the best form of user-generated content anymore, and maybe they never were. We need to work on ways to track a wider range of sources from our audiences, and new ways to roll their experiences into our coverage. Twitter quizzes and Facebook polls don’t tell us anything about the story of a reader, and comments, though more authentic than other forms of UGC, are policed and feared to the point that they don’t provide a service to reader or journalist. Let’s really consider how we communicate.
Before engaging in any UGC, let’s ask what these answers will provide. What question are we asking and how does it fit into the larger strategy around coverage? Who will learn from this? What’s the story we’re telling? By rolling these reader experiences into our work, we open up our newsrooms to new ways of thinking, more authentic conversations with our audience which builds more trust and loyalty, and more accurate reporting for the longterm.
Annemarie Dooling is director of programming at Racked.
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
David Weigel A test for online speech
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights