No assholes allowed

“The price? Toxic workplaces, talent drain, skewed covering, lawsuits, long-term damage to news organizations’ reputation and credibility, and loss of revenue from advertisers, subscribers, and members.”

Matt Lauer, Mark Halperin, Charlie Rose, and all the other fallen sexual harassers had one thing in common. They were notorious assholes. (See Venn diagram below.)

They yelled at people, belittled staff in front of colleagues, threatened, bullied, interrupted, mocked, and generally threw their weight around. We thought it was the price to pay for the talent of great men. Maybe being an asshole was even a sign of great talent.

It was a sign, all right.  A sign that something was very, very wrong. And the price? Toxic workplaces, talent drain, skewed covering, lawsuits, long-term damage to news organizations’ reputation and credibility, and loss of revenue from advertisers, subscribers, and members.

Prediction: In 2018, newsrooms adopt a no-assholes rule. You want to be an asshole? Sorry, you can’t work here.

(Credit for inventing the No Asshole Rule goes to Stanford professor Robert I. Sutton.)

Marie Gilot is the director of CUNY J+, the professional development arm of the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism.

Charo Henríquez   Training is an investment, not an expense

Ruth Palmer   Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities

Debra Adams Simmons   And a woman shall lead them

Alexios Mantzarlis   Moving fake news research out of the lab

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

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc

Damon Krukowski   Reviving the alt-weekly soul

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Mariano Blejman   News games rule

Mary Meehan   Real lives are at stake in rural areas

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

Frédéric Filloux   External forces

Mandy Velez   texting is lit rn, fam

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

Tim Carmody   Watch out for Spotify

Kawandeep Virdee   Zines had it right all along

Michelle Garcia   Navigating journalistic transparency

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

Kim Fox   Audience teams diversify their approach

Sue Schardt   Jump the niche

Michael Kuntz   The only pivot that might work

Kathleen McElroy   Building a news video experience native to mobile

Justin Kosslyn   The year journalists become digital security experts

Francesco Marconi   The year of machine-to-machine journalism

Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Richard Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Ray Soto   VR reaches the next level

C.W. Anderson   The social media apocalypse

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

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

Jamie Mottram   From pageviews to t-shirts

Cristina Wilson   The year of the Instagram Story

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

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

Jessica Parker Gilbert   Design connects storytelling and strategy

David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

Ståle Grut   Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks

Gordon Crovitz   Serving readers over advertisers

Corey Johnson   The pro-fact resistance

Umbreen Bhatti   The trust problem isn’t new

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

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

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

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

John Keefe   Scooped by AI

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

Almar Latour   Conquering calm

Andrew Ramsammy   The year ownership mattered

Nancy Watzman   Know thy TV

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female

Nikki Usher   The year of The Washington Post

Jake Levine   The return to now

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

Burt Herman   Things get real

Julia Beizer   A longer view on the pivot

Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

Imaeyen Ibanga   Longform video leads the way

Jim Brady   With the people, not just of the people

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

Mariana Moura Santos   Think local, act global

Matt Thompson   Here come the attention managers

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

Paul Ford   Go global

Jared Newman   Venture funding and digital news don’t mix

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Carrie Brown-Smith   Transparency finally takes off

Corey Ford   The empire strikes back

Vanessa K. DeLuca   Women’s voices take center stage

Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

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

Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

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

Sam Ford   The year of investing in processes

Caitlin Thompson   Podcasting models mature and diversify

Niketa Patel   Live journalism comes of age

Cindy Royal   Your journalism curriculum is obsolete

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Publishing less to give readers more

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Kristen Muller   The year of the voter

Neha Gandhi   Filler killers

Kinsey Wilson   Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up

Lam Thuy Vo   Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest

Juleyka Lantigua   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

Steve Grove   The midterms are an opportunity

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

Laura E. Davis   Writing answers before you know the question

Craig Newmark   Working together toward sustainable solutions

Matt DeRienzo   A recession, then a collapse

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

Elizabeth Jensen   Show your work

Andrew Haeg   The year journalists become relationship builders

Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán   The editorial meeting of the future

Tracie Powell   The muting of underserved voices

Michelle Ferrier   The year of the great reckoning

Emma Carew Grovum   Newsroom culture becomes a priority

Lucas Graves   From algorithms to institutions

Doris Truong   Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes

S. Mitra Kalita   The arc of news and audience

Mario García   Storytelling finally adapts to mobile

Amy King   Let’s amplify visual voice

Evie Nagy   Pivot to mobile video frustration

Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first

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

Alastair Coote   The year of self-improvement

José Zamora   Revenue-first journalism

Basile Simon   We need better career paths for news nerds

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

Raju Narisetti   Mirror, mirror on the wall

Dannagal G. Young   Stop covering politics as a game

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

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

Luke O'Neil   The end is already here

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Adam Thomas   Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

Edward Roussel   Eyes, ears, and brains

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

Monika Bauerlein   The firehose of falsehood

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

Nathalie Malinarich   Peak push

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

Rick Berke   Value is the watchword

Hossein Derakhshan   Television has won

Usha Sahay   Wallets get opened

Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

Amy Webb   Listen to weak signals

An Xiao Mina   Memes and visuals come to the fore

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Pia Frey   Address users as individuals

Pablo Boczkowski   The rise of skeptical reading

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging

Joanne Lipman   Journalists inventing revenue streams

Rodney Gibbs   Tech workers turn to journalism

P. Kim Bui   The reckoning is only beginning

Lanre Akinola   Making noise is not a strategy

Rachel Schallom   Better design helps differentiate opinion and news

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

Taylor Lorenz   Social and media will split

Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

Andrew Losowsky   The year of resilience

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

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

Christopher Meighan   Passive partnership is in the rearview

Zizi Papacharissi   Women come back

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

Kyle Ellis   Let’s build our way out of this

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Carlos Martínez de la Serna   The new journalism commons

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

Alice Antheaume   Are you fluent in AI?

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

Daniel Trielli   The rich get richer, the poor scramble

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

Trushar Barot   The Jio-fication of India

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

Cory Haik   Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Tanya Cordrey   Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

Ariana Tobin   Too tired to tap

Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

Pete Brown   Push alerts, personalized

Molly de Aguiar   Good journalism won’t be enough

Heather Bryant   Building the ecosystems for collaboration