Let’s start with the obvious: Times are tough for media these days. Some of that is a course correction after a period of over-inflated valuations and flip-of-the-switch audience building. Some of that is about a shift in human behavior, away from wanting to read in solitude and instead being retrained to like and share and crave likes and shares. It’s unfair (and inaccurate) to say that this was something that was done “to” publishers “by” social media platforms, though, because most of us were complicit in the shift that happened as Facebook and Twitter because meaningful places to distribute content. Most publishers still standing today built (or rebuilt) their businesses through social media — and shifted what “good content” looked like in the process. “Is it sharable” replaced “is it memorable?” and “is it a new idea?” With immediate feedback, easy data capture, and an overabundance of signals to measure, digital media has always been inherently built to trend toward the formulaic. And realizing that people mostly shared just a few simple archetypes of content, we all started to make more content — through the lens of those formulas. Because scaling businesses is about finding cheaper, more efficient, repeatable solutions to the same problems.
But the world is shifting — in some terrifying and disheartening big-picture ways, and in other ways that are smaller and more limited in their impact. Some of those smaller shifts:
So we can imagine a world in just a few more years where there are a lot fewer options by way of “publishers” and “media companies” filling the internet with a mix of highbrow, lowbrow, brilliance, and crap — and pumping out hundreds of different versions of the same stories in the process. There’s of course some danger here (the entire reason antitrust laws exist, really), but that’s another conversation altogether.
But that’s not the only shift on the horizon. The other thing that happens in tandem is that the social platforms are shifting their businesses away from driving eyeballs to the content they needed from publishers a handful of years back — whether that’s a link pointing back to a website from Facebook, a video of an exploding watermelon, or some other viewing experience meant for three seconds of consumption. Reach is down for most publishers already (a cursory look at CrowdTangle will illustrate this clearly), and eventually, we’re all going to break up with Facebook — or at least cool things off a little bit. And as that happens — because we’ll no longer be incentivized to optimize our content production to the 30 to 45 link posts a day plus 10 to 12 videos that might yield the largest number of aggregate visits and views from the News Feed — we’ll stop making lots of short, forgettable blips of filler content. We’ll still tell stories and grow audiences using social platforms, but we’ll do it in a way that puts the user first rather than existing to game the system.
If all of that happens, then suddenly, fewer media companies are left standing — and they’re making less stuff. Meaning there is less of the same mediocre stuff all over the internet.
And if those consolidated players can manage not to lay off too many writers, editors, and creatives in the race to make the next pivot, they’ll be left with a handful of talented, creative people making a handful of interesting, unique things.
In that world, maybe we stop thinking about three seconds of engagement with any piece of storytelling as a success. We start to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We stop spreading accidental half-truths because we don’t have time to fact-check our stories and clearly explain complicated ideas. We showcase the difference between real news and fake news — making fake news easier to spot and making it a little more difficult for loud voices to decry the real thing as fake. We retrain audiences to think critically about what they read and watch. We value the signals that really matter in the long-term rather than the short-term, and we raise the bar for all of the work we do — not just a small fraction of it that’s the “good stuff” or the “investment content.”
That’s definitely the world I want to live in — and the world we’re trying to build over at Girlboss, leaning on audio, experiential, carefully crafted deep dives and thoughtfully reported service pieces over quick hits and aggregation. (You can find a grand total of five new stories on the site on any given day.) So that’s the bet I’m placing for 2018: Less crap on the internet, please.
Neha Gandhi is editor-in-chief and chief operating officer at Girlboss.
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
An Xiao Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back