Dear American colleagues: Look abroad. Your predictions for 2017 are probably already happening somewhere else.
The time when everything in journalism and media happened in the States and was then exported to the rest of the world is over. The financial crisis hit European countries so hard that not only the news industry was reconfigured, but so was the whole political framework in which they develop their businesses. And from there, innovation is growing. If you want to make predictions for your future, have a look at our present.
The New York Times had a huge increase of digital subscriptions after receiving some direct accusations from new president-elect Donald Trump. Is that an isolated event? No, it is not.
We at eldiario.es have been 4 years now developing our membership program as an innovative funding model. Our members (we call them “socios”) are not paying to read the news; they pay for the news to be spread. No paywall, no gifts. They are not interested in being our clients but our partners-in-crime for that social mission called journalism. We have 20,000 members, paying 60 euros a year, who are there to protect us, to encourage us, and to send a message: We believe democracies need better journalism.
The Guardian has been building for a year its membership program too. Have a look at their marketing for fundraising while surfing the site. They all talk about the need for the project and independent journalism “more than ever,” an implicit general allusion to Brexit. It’s not about the news — it’s about the project’s attributes. Are you credible? Are you trustable? Are you part of the problem or part of the solution?
Then we can visit a few more small newsrooms in Europe, such as Atlatzo in Hungary or Denník in Slovakia or Mediapart in France. These are projects which have developed quality journalism, even investigative skills, based on the support of their audiences. Audiences who are part of the project, not the product being sold to advertisers who sometimes don’t care whether the content is fake, post-factual, a lie, or whatever.
Building trust is building quality. And if you have a loyal community then you probably can ask them for help. How do you grow a public who has that sense of belonging? Try social networks, try newsletters, try to use your personal touch, try to treat the readers as adults…We all know that. And then try creating little communities who are short in numbers but strong in engagement.
For instance, at eldiario.es we have a Telegram group for readers. We have now more than 15,000 members in that group. We share with them some insights of our newsroom, audio notes, and, yes, sometimes funny gifs or stickers. Of course, their usefulness in a comScore competition is none. But their value for us is huge.
We also focus on personalization in our new app for smartphones. You will receive notifications not about whatever the managing editor finds important, but on the topics you find most important to you. If you’re not interested in NBA results, why would you want to be bothered after dinner with the score? If you are really interested in LGBT rights, why shouldn’t you be notified when a gay marriage law is passed in Argentina?
If you want to escape noise, know better your audience. If you want to run away from post-factual journalism, find a trustable social contract with your readers. If you want to be respected by people, try to get closer to them. Not as clients, not as the product being sold, but as your best friends.
Juan Luis Sánchez is deputy editor-in-chief at eldiario.es.
Mary Meehan Feeling blue in a red state
Ståle Grut The battle for high-quality VR
Julia Beizer Building a coherent core identity
Sarah Marshall Focusing on the why of the click
Dhiya Kuriakose The year of digital detoxing
Katie Zhu The year of minority media
David Skok What lies beyond paywalls
Amy O'Leary Not just covering communities, reaching them
Hillary Frey Forests need to burn to regrow
Millie Tran International expansion without colonial overtones
Andrew Haeg The year of listening
Andrew Ramsammy Rise of the rebel journalist
Cindy Royal Preparing the digital educator-scholar hybrid
Kawandeep Virdee Moving deeper than the machine of clicks
Sarah Wolozin Virtual reality on the open web
Michael Kuntz Trust is the new click
Scott Dodd Nonprofits team up for impact
Helen Havlak Chasing mobile search results
Peter Sterne A dangerous anti-press mix
Richard Tofel The country doesn’t trust us — but they do believe us
Ken Schwencke Disaggregation and collection
Matt Waite The people running the media are the problem
Rachel Sklar Women are going to get loud
Tanya Cordrey The resurgence of reach
Vivian Schiller Tested like never before
Emily Goligoski Incorporating audience feedback at scale
Reyhan Harmanci Bear witness — but then what?
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Truthiness in private spaces
Lee Glendinning A call for great editing
Amie Ferris-Rotman Вслед за Россией
Sue Schardt Objectivity, fairness, balance, and love
Gabriel Snyder The aberration of 20th-century journalism
Rebekah Monson Journalism is community-as-a-service
An Xiao Mina 2017 is for the attention innovators
Caitlin Thompson High touch, high value
Carla Zanoni Prioritizing emotional health
Jeremy Barr A terrible year for Tiers B through D
Nushin Rashidian A rise in high-price, high-value subscriptions
Ashley C. Woods Local journalism will fight a new fight
Robert Hernandez History will exclude you, again
Moreno Cruz Osório The year of transparency in Brazilian journalism
Keren Goldshlager Defining a focus, and then saying no
Anita Zielina The sales funnel reaches (and changes) the newsroom
Annemarie Dooling UGC as a path out of the bubble
Liz McMillen The year of deep insights
Zizi Papacharissi Distracted journalism looks in the mirror
Erin Millar The bottom falls out of Canadian media
Andrea Silenzi Podcasts dive into breaking news analysis
Cory Haik Navigating power in Trump’s America
Geetika Rudra Journalism is community
Mandy Velez The audience is the source and the story
Ariane Bernard Better data about your users
Mira Lowe News literacy, bias, and “Hamilton”
Alexis Lloyd Public trust for private realities
Mathew Ingram The Faustian Facebook dance continues
Ray Soto VR moves from experiments to immersion
Almar Latour Thanks, #fakenews
Andrew Losowsky Building our own communities
Ole Reißmann Un-faking the news
Doris Truong Connecting with diverse perspectives
Jon Slade Trusted news, at a premium
David Weigel A test for online speech
Nathalie Malinarich Making it easy
Matt Karolian AI improves publishing
Claire Wardle Verification takes center stage
Molly de Aguiar Philanthropists galvanize around news
P. Kim Bui The year journalism teaches again
Dan Gillmor Fix the demand side of news too
Rachel Schallom Stop flying over the flyover states
Priya Ganapati Mobile websites are ready for reinvention
Corey Ford The year of the rebelpreneur
Ryan McCarthy Platforms grow up or grow more toxic
Errin Haines Chaos or community?
Andy Rossback The year of the user
Samantha Barry Messaging apps go mainstream
Libby Bawcombe Kids board the podcast train
Dan Colarusso Let’s make live video we can love
Tim Griggs The year we stop taking sides
Juan Luis Sánchez Your predictions are our present
Tressie McMillan Cottom A path through the media’s coming legitimacy crisis
Alberto Cairo Communicating uncertainty to our readers
Tim Herrera The safe space of service journalism
Olivia Ma The year collaboration beats competition
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen News after advertising may look like news before advertising
Erin Pettigrew A year of reflection in tech
Maria Bustillos “It’s true — I saw it on Facebook”
Burt Herman Local news gets interesting
Emi Kolawole From empathy to community
Guy Raz Inspiration and hope will matter more than ever
Jonathan Stray A boom in responsible conservative media
Aja Bogdanoff Comments start pulling their weight
David Chavern Fake news gets solved
Umbreen Bhatti A sense of journalists’ humanity
Mario García Virtual reality on mobile leaps forward
Pablo Boczkowski Fake news and the future of journalism
Joanne Lipman The year of the drone, really
M. Scott Havens Quality advertising to pair with quality content
Eric Nuzum Podcasting stratifies into hard layers
Kathleen Kingsbury Print as a premium offering
Francesco Marconi The year of augmented writing
Swati Sharma Failing diversity is failing journalism
Lam Thuy Vo The primary source in the age of mechanical multiplication
Javaun Moradi What can we own?
Jim Friedlich A banner year for venture philanthropy
Alice Antheaume A new test for French media
Christopher Meighan Unlocking a deeper mobile experience
Sara M. Watson There is no neutral interface
Mike Ragsdale A smarter information diet
Dannagal G. Young The return of the gatekeepers
Tracie Powell Building reader relationships
Bill Keller A healthy skepticism about data
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Earn trust by working for (and with) readers
Asma Khalid The year of the newsy podcast
Rubina Madan Fillion Snapchat grows up
Renée Kaplan Pure reach has reached its limit
S.P. Sullivan Baking transparency into our routines
Margarita Noriega From pinning tweets to tweeting pins
Elizabeth Jensen Trust depends on the details
Carrie Brown-Smith We won’t do enough
Megan H. Chan Cultural reporting goes mainstream
Taylor Lorenz “Selfie journalism” becomes a thing
Jonathan Hunt Measurement companies get with the times
Laura Walker Authentic voices, not fake news
Nicholas Quah Podcasting’s coming class war
Sydette Harry Facing journalism’s history
Sam Ford The year we talk about our awful metrics
Juliette De Maeyer and Dominique Trudel A rebirth of populist journalism
Liz Danzico The triumph of the small
Mary Walter-Brown Getting comfortable asking for money
Steve Henn The next revolution is voice
Amy Webb Journalism as a service