How do I want to start out my 2018 predictions? By saying “I called it” for 2017. Last year, my predictions centered around the high-touch, high-value propositions that content creators needed to put forth in order to ensure their own survival — from niche print titles (like my own, Racquet magazine), to premium/paywalls that have been the lifeblood of news outlets such as The New York Times, to the flourishing world of audio that I get to explore as content director at Acast.
These high-value propositions not only survived in the tumultuous year of our lord 2017 — one that saw digital-first operations like BuzzFeed and Mashable fall far short of revenue projections, slashing jobs and pivoting to video as they frantically tried to find an advertising model to sustain their heavy costs — they thrived. Why? Because they got much of their revenue directly from their audience, proving that in the era of platform dominance, an ad-supported model for journalism might always be a part of the mix, but it can never be the complete picture.
Instead of further gloating, I’ll make some more bold predictions for 2018:
With the acquisition of Audiosearch earlier this month, Apple made a bold move to reclaim some of the territory it had ceded to competitors in the realm of audio discovery. This is a signal that Apple sees the upcoming year of podcasting as one battling between itself, Google, Amazon, and platforms such as Acast — all trying to surface content to a podcast audience that doesn’t yet exist. That these big players don’t yet have a route to monetization, the way that Acast and Megaphone do, isn’t what’s interesting here — it’s that they’re betting on the 70-something percent of Americans who don’t regularly listen to podcasts to start listening through new ways of discovery.
Search, in-home devices, and native apps are all muscling into a territory that they will help expand quickly, giving podcast creators tremendous new freedom in storytelling formats and even revenue models. When podcasting reaches its potential size, looking more like peak radio penetration thanks to these many new and improved sources of discovery, we’ll start to see several revenue models arise to support the diversity of content now possible by untethering the form from RSS — short-form, daily, one-offs — supported by ads, subscription, or in-app purchasing like Acast Plus and many others, finally yielding the diversity that has always been podcasting’s essential promise.
I see the consumption models of content eventually hovering around two ends of a spectrum of engagement. On one hand, an atomized stream of content delivered around algorithmically and socially derived recommendations served to us via tech platforms — from Google Home to Twitter to Instagram — all interconnected and constantly calibrating to make sure we’re getting the most relevant content served up to us in our hands.
And on the other end of the spectrum, a complete lean-back experience, served to us when we barely remember we asked for it (hopefully inciting some whimsy and surprise), in a format that focuses our complete immersion in the experience. Of course, I’m talking about Racquet magazine — a print-only product we ship four times a year — filled with stories that we deem interesting, that have underappreciated subject matters, headlines that you’d never click on, and images you can’t encounter in a Google search. To enjoy our magazine, and the many, many other quarterlies that continue to pop up, you must completely surrender to the idea that you have almost no control over the content experience — your trust is our hands.
Caitlin Thompson is director of content for Acast and publisher of Racquet.
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Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
AX Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future