Navigating journalistic transparency

“The media industry has shifted in so many ways in the last two decades, but our readers have not been privy to the process in a way that helps them understand.”

As an industry, it’s our duty to help readers understand what we do, how we work, how we make money, and how they are part of this process. The media industry has shifted in so many ways in the last two decades, but our readers have not been privy to the process in a way that helps them understand. For instance, they might not understand why we break news the way we do, or why quality journalism can be expensive to generate.

Distrust in institutions — including flinging the term “fake news” at our best news organizations — only contributes to the problem. In 2018, I anticipate more newsrooms sharing how the sausage gets made to our consumers, engaging with young readers to stress news literacy at an early age, or getting readers involved in the reporting/producing process more frequently beyond commenting and sharing stories on social media.

Michelle Garcia is race and identities senior editor at Vox.

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Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán   The editorial meeting of the future

Matt Thompson   Here come the attention managers

Paul Ford   Go global

Hossein Derakhshan   Television has won

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

Justin Kosslyn   The year journalists become digital security experts

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

Umbreen Bhatti   The trust problem isn’t new

Tim Carmody   Watch out for Spotify

Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

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

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

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

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

Juleyka Lantigua   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

Kristen Muller   The year of the voter

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female

Jared Newman   Venture funding and digital news don’t mix

Jim Brady   With the people, not just of the people

Trushar Barot   The Jio-fication of India

Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

Molly de Aguiar   Good journalism won’t be enough

Richard Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Amy King   Let’s amplify visual voice

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

S. Mitra Kalita   The arc of news and audience

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

Damon Krukowski   Reviving the alt-weekly soul

Alexios Mantzarlis   Moving fake news research out of the lab

Emma Carew Grovum   Newsroom culture becomes a priority

Daniel Trielli   The rich get richer, the poor scramble

Cory Haik   Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

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

Frédéric Filloux   External forces

Ruth Palmer   Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities

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Jamie Mottram   From pageviews to t-shirts

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

Luke O'Neil   The end is already here

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

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

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

Laura E. Davis   Writing answers before you know the question

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

Dannagal G. Young   Stop covering politics as a game

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc

Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Debra Adams Simmons   And a woman shall lead them

Rick Berke   Value is the watchword

Lanre Akinola   Making noise is not a strategy

Usha Sahay   Wallets get opened

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

P. Kim Bui   The reckoning is only beginning

Sam Ford   The year of investing in processes

Burt Herman   Things get real

Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

Andrew Ramsammy   The year ownership mattered

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

Ståle Grut   Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

Andrew Losowsky   The year of resilience

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

Almar Latour   Conquering calm

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

Matt DeRienzo   A recession, then a collapse

Mandy Velez   texting is lit rn, fam

Cristina Wilson   The year of the Instagram Story

Mario García   Storytelling finally adapts to mobile

Lam Thuy Vo   Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest

Steve Grove   The midterms are an opportunity

Monika Bauerlein   The firehose of falsehood

Kawandeep Virdee   Zines had it right all along

Niketa Patel   Live journalism comes of age

Christopher Meighan   Passive partnership is in the rearview

Andrew Haeg   The year journalists become relationship builders

Carrie Brown   Transparency finally takes off

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Corey Johnson   The pro-fact resistance

Gordon Crovitz   Serving readers over advertisers

Doris Truong   Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes

Evie Nagy   Pivot to mobile video frustration

Lucas Graves   From algorithms to institutions

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

Adam Thomas   Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first

Kim Fox   Audience teams diversify their approach

Joanne Lipman   Journalists inventing revenue streams

Tanya Cordrey   Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention

Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

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

Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

Alice Antheaume   Are you fluent in AI?

Rodney Gibbs   Tech workers turn to journalism

John Keefe   Scooped by AI

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

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Nancy Watzman   Know thy TV

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

Pete Brown   Push alerts, personalized

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

Elizabeth Jensen   Show your work

Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

Neha Gandhi   Filler killers

Charo Henríquez   Training is an investment, not an expense

Kathleen McElroy   Building a news video experience native to mobile

Vanessa K. DeLuca   Women’s voices take center stage

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

Nik Usher   The year of The Washington Post

Ariana Tobin   Too tired to tap

Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging

Mariano Blejman   News games rule

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Craig Newmark   Working together toward sustainable solutions

Kyle Ellis   Let’s build our way out of this

Imaeyen Ibanga   Longform video leads the way

Kinsey Wilson   Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up

Ray Soto   VR reaches the next level

Jessica Parker Gilbert   Design connects storytelling and strategy

Francesco Marconi   The year of machine-to-machine journalism

Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

Edward Roussel   Eyes, ears, and brains

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Publishing less to give readers more

Mary Meehan   Real lives are at stake in rural areas

José Zamora   Revenue-first journalism

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

Nathalie Malinarich   Peak push

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Michelle Garcia   Navigating journalistic transparency

Amy Webb   Listen to weak signals

Alastair Coote   The year of self-improvement

David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

Carlos Martínez de la Serna   The new journalism commons

Rachel Schallom   Better design helps differentiate opinion and news

Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)

Julia Beizer   A longer view on the pivot

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

Mariana Moura Santos   Think local, act global

Taylor Lorenz   Social and media will split

Pia Frey   Address users as individuals

Caitlin Thompson   Podcasting models mature and diversify

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

Michelle Ferrier   The year of the great reckoning

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

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

Raju Narisetti   Mirror, mirror on the wall

Michael Kuntz   The only pivot that might work

Corey Ford   The empire strikes back

Pablo Boczkowski   The rise of skeptical reading

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Jake Levine   The return to now

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

Zizi Papacharissi   Women come back

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

Cindy Royal   Your journalism curriculum is obsolete

Sue Schardt   Jump the niche

Basile Simon   We need better career paths for news nerds

Heather Bryant   Building the ecosystems for collaboration

Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook