2017 is going to provide an interesting opportunity for news organizations, thanks to voice-activated personal home assistants. These unassuming small internet-connected devices are powered by evolving machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms, built to deliver relevant and credible news catered to an individual’s preferences. Through audio cues, news will become conversational providing a consumer the opportunity to build a personal relationship with a news organization: “Good morning. What’s happening in the world today?”
Next year will be the defining moment for virtual reality in news as organizations around the globe build dedicated teams to support the emerging platform. Expect a shift from experimental passive video to interactive experiences. If your production teams haven’t already heard of these terms, get to know them: ambisonics, stereoscopic rendering, and photogrammetry will be standard by the end of the year. Audiences will have an opportunity to explore and discover the stories that matter to them, in a way they’ve never seen before.
Don’t expect much from augmented reality in the coming year. The technology is evolving but newsrooms won’t be able to support the development demands to create and support compelling content on devices with limited functionality. Similar to virtual reality in 2015, now is the time to begin experimentation to understand the platform and its demands.
Ray Soto is design director of emerging technologies at USA Today Network.
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Amy Webb Journalism as a service
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Adam Thomas The coming collaboration across Europe
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Melody Kramer Radically rethinking design
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Bill Adair The year of the fact-checking bot
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Michael Oreskes Reversing the erosion of democracy
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
David Weigel A test for online speech
AX Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering