Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

“Journalism is punch-drunk and staggering, convinced that still being on its feet is the same as putting up a fight.”

I want everyone to be proud of me that I didn’t begin this with a string of epithets and pejoratives.

I don’t want to be eloquent and visionary. I want to be direct. So I’m gonna use boxing and the Dungeon Family.

We are losing a slugfest that we don’t have to, because we spent so much time trying to separate from the people and communities we write for that we keep trying to have a “dialogue” in the middle of Round 4.

We are in a fight and, frankly, we’re probably gonna lose. Our inability to clearly and openly discuss the reality of the moment and the history of the practice, development, and power of journalism left us open. They hit journalism with everything they had, every chance they had.

From “fake news” being decontextualized from propaganda, to objectivity becoming an excuse for a complete dereliction of duty. Rather than asking questions, naked careerism and “access” made our storied profession a game.

Clicks and constantly moving (and often ultimately unimportant) metrics had millions of dollars chasing technology goals that were ultimately inaccessible to most of our audience.

The people in our corner. The people who told us again and again they wanted to be heard. Who supported hyperlocal news while windmilling legacy papers sacrificed credibility over and over.

Non-diverse, complacent newsrooms have codes for behavior on social media that silence the marginalized, but they can’t recognize the conflict of interest that social contact with millionaire-financed right-wingers creates.

And they had the nerve to demand they be respected while reporting on a trick many audiences had seen years ago.

Journalism is punch-drunk and staggering, convinced that still being on its feet is the same as putting up a fight. As audiences, experts, academics, and our constantly shifting platforms desperately try to stem the blood flowing from the open cut over our eyes.

Go listen to “Watch for the Hook (Dungeon Family Remix)” by Cool Breeze. From picking up our pencils, to actively realizing the danger we are in, ATL’s Dungeon Family has laid a template for what we need to do next.

Whether we listen to it or not is up to us, but we are shook, and whether we come back is dependent on us realizing we need the perspectives that see danger before we do while they still care to tell us.

Better listen to our corner. Because the bell for Round 5 just rung. Ding ding.

Sydette Harry is editor-at-large of The Coral Project and an editor at the Mozilla Foundation.

Ray Soto   VR reaches the next level

Kinsey Wilson   Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

Juleyka Lantigua   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Justin Kosslyn   The year journalists become digital security experts

David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

Aron Pilhofer   We can’t leave the business to the business side any more

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

Steve Grove   The midterms are an opportunity

Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

Damon Krukowski   Reviving the alt-weekly soul

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

Matt Thompson   Here come the attention managers

Andrew Ramsammy   The year ownership mattered

Jim Moroney   Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for

Carlos Martínez de la Serna   The new journalism commons

Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán   The editorial meeting of the future

Tanya Cordrey   Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention

Alastair Coote   The year of self-improvement

Ståle Grut   Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Ruth Palmer   Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities

Mary Meehan   Real lives are at stake in rural areas

Mario García   Storytelling finally adapts to mobile

Heather Bryant   Building the ecosystems for collaboration

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Umbreen Bhatti   The trust problem isn’t new

Amy King   Let’s amplify visual voice

Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)

Tanzina Vega   It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic

Nancy Watzman   Know thy TV

Almar Latour   Conquering calm

Pablo Boczkowski   The rise of skeptical reading

Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

Jared Newman   Venture funding and digital news don’t mix

Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

Doris Truong   Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes

Adam Thomas   Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

Corey Johnson   The pro-fact resistance

Mandy Velez   texting is lit rn, fam

Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

Gordon Crovitz   Serving readers over advertisers

Richard Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Ariana Tobin   Too tired to tap

C.W. Anderson   The social media apocalypse

Burt Herman   Things get real

P. Kim Bui   The reckoning is only beginning

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

Helen Havlak   Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds

Kyle Ellis   Let’s build our way out of this

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

Hossein Derakhshan   Television has won

Cindy Royal   Your journalism curriculum is obsolete

Lanre Akinola   Making noise is not a strategy

Jessica Parker Gilbert   Design connects storytelling and strategy

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

Rodney Gibbs   Tech workers turn to journalism

Rick Berke   Value is the watchword

Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

Monika Bauerlein   The firehose of falsehood

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

Michelle Ferrier   The year of the great reckoning

Sue Schardt   Jump the niche

Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg   (Hint: It’s about your brand)

Edward Roussel   Eyes, ears, and brains

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

John Keefe   Scooped by AI

Cristina Wilson   The year of the Instagram Story

Tim Carmody   Watch out for Spotify

Mariana Moura Santos   Think local, act global

S. Mitra Kalita   The arc of news and audience

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Sam Ford   The year of investing in processes

Andrew Losowsky   The year of resilience

Daniel Trielli   The rich get richer, the poor scramble

Debra Adams Simmons   And a woman shall lead them

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

Usha Sahay   Wallets get opened

Amy Webb   Listen to weak signals

Matt DeRienzo   A recession, then a collapse

Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first

Dannagal G. Young   Stop covering politics as a game

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

Alan Soon   The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media

Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy   Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism

Dan Shanoff   You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)

Pia Frey   Address users as individuals

Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

Michael Kuntz   The only pivot that might work

Rachel Schallom   Better design helps differentiate opinion and news

Molly de Aguiar   Good journalism won’t be enough

Michelle Garcia   Navigating journalistic transparency

Frédéric Filloux   External forces

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen   The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms

Corey Ford   The empire strikes back

Jesse Holcomb   Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Publishing less to give readers more

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Jamie Mottram   From pageviews to t-shirts

Niketa Patel   Live journalism comes of age

Trushar Barot   The Jio-fication of India

José Zamora   Revenue-first journalism

Evie Nagy   Pivot to mobile video frustration

Lam Thuy Vo   Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest

Susie Banikarim   R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)

Kim Fox   Audience teams diversify their approach

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

Kawandeep Virdee   Zines had it right all along

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

Emma Carew Grovum   Newsroom culture becomes a priority

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

Julia B. Chan   Looking for loyalty in all the right places

Christopher Meighan   Passive partnership is in the rearview

Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

Caitlin Thompson   Podcasting models mature and diversify

Francesco Marconi   The year of machine-to-machine journalism

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

Jake Levine   The return to now

Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

Kathleen McElroy   Building a news video experience native to mobile

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Pete Brown   Push alerts, personalized

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

Julia Beizer   A longer view on the pivot

Elizabeth Jensen   Show your work

Paul Ford   Go global

Eric Ulken   The year local publishers get smart(er) about change

Errin Haines   At the ballot, it’s time to count black women

Carrie Brown-Smith   Transparency finally takes off

Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

Craig Newmark   Working together toward sustainable solutions

Alice Antheaume   Are you fluent in AI?

Charo Henríquez   Training is an investment, not an expense

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

Nikki Usher   The year of The Washington Post

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

Imaeyen Ibanga   Longform video leads the way

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

Jim Brady   With the people, not just of the people

Tracie Powell   The muting of underserved voices

Laura E. Davis   Writing answers before you know the question

Alexios Mantzarlis   Moving fake news research out of the lab

Vanessa K. DeLuca   Women’s voices take center stage

Basile Simon   We need better career paths for news nerds

Cory Haik   Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

Sara M. Watson   Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters

Taylor Lorenz   Social and media will split

Zizi Papacharissi   Women come back

Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

Neha Gandhi   Filler killers

Raju Narisetti   Mirror, mirror on the wall

Lucas Graves   From algorithms to institutions

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

Luke O'Neil   The end is already here

Nathalie Malinarich   Peak push

An Xiao Mina   Memes and visuals come to the fore

Kristen Muller   The year of the voter

Joanne Lipman   Journalists inventing revenue streams

Mariano Blejman   News games rule

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

Andrew Haeg   The year journalists become relationship builders

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc