Reviving the alt-weekly soul

“All that’s missing is the form. If it can’t be newsprint — which seems likely — maybe it has to be electronic. But whatever new form it takes, the need for regular, plentiful, and local arts journalism is clear.”

I think we may be at such a crisis point in arts journalism that things can’t but get better — so even though this may be more wish than prediction, I’ll say 2018 will see a reinvention of the role formerly served by the “alternative weeklies.”

Now that even New York (The Village Voice) and Los Angeles (LA Weekly) have lost theirs, no one can say it’s for lack of readership; surely the biggest media markets in the country can support arts journalism. And obviously the problem is not a lack of content — my Twitter contacts alone could easily fill the pages of a weekly for both cities, and you might as well toss in my home market of Cambridge/Boston so I can contribute too.

All that’s missing is the form. If it can’t be newsprint — which seems likely — maybe it has to be electronic. But whatever new form it takes, the need for regular, plentiful, and local arts journalism is clear. So c’mon, let’s crack this problem before next year is done.

Damon Krukowski is author of The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World and host of the Radiotopia podcast miniseries Ways of Hearing.

Rick Berke   Value is the watchword

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

Niketa Patel   Live journalism comes of age

Cindy Royal   Your journalism curriculum is obsolete

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

Kawandeep Virdee   Zines had it right all along

Tracie Powell   The muting of underserved voices

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Juleyka Lantigua   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

Taylor Lorenz   Social and media will split

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Publishing less to give readers more

Justin Kosslyn   The year journalists become digital security experts

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

Rachel Schallom   Better design helps differentiate opinion and news

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

Matt Thompson   Here come the attention managers

Christopher Meighan   Passive partnership is in the rearview

Sue Schardt   Jump the niche

Jim Brady   With the people, not just of the people

Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

An Xiao Mina   Memes and visuals come to the fore

Kim Fox   Audience teams diversify their approach

Burt Herman   Things get real

Andrew Haeg   The year journalists become relationship builders

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

Nikki Usher   The year of The Washington Post

Francesco Marconi   The year of machine-to-machine journalism

Ray Soto   VR reaches the next level

Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

Alice Antheaume   Are you fluent in AI?

Emma Carew Grovum   Newsroom culture becomes a priority

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

Gordon Crovitz   Serving readers over advertisers

Joanne Lipman   Journalists inventing revenue streams

Frédéric Filloux   External forces

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

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

Mariana Moura Santos   Think local, act global

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

Raju Narisetti   Mirror, mirror on the wall

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

Ruth Palmer   Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities

Michael Kuntz   The only pivot that might work

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Lucas Graves   From algorithms to institutions

Trushar Barot   The Jio-fication of India

Laura E. Davis   Writing answers before you know the question

Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán   The editorial meeting of the future

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

Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Pablo Boczkowski   The rise of skeptical reading

Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

Steve Grove   The midterms are an opportunity

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

Adam Thomas   Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

Paul Ford   Go global

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

Mariano Blejman   News games rule

Imaeyen Ibanga   Longform video leads the way

Vanessa K. DeLuca   Women’s voices take center stage

Doris Truong   Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

Craig Newmark   Working together toward sustainable solutions

Edward Roussel   Eyes, ears, and brains

Sam Ford   The year of investing in processes

Corey Ford   The empire strikes back

Michelle Garcia   Navigating journalistic transparency

Heather Bryant   Building the ecosystems for collaboration

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

Daniel Trielli   The rich get richer, the poor scramble

Pete Brown   Push alerts, personalized

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

Ariana Tobin   Too tired to tap

Alexios Mantzarlis   Moving fake news research out of the lab

Andrew Ramsammy   The year ownership mattered

Caitlin Thompson   Podcasting models mature and diversify

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

Lam Thuy Vo   Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest

Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

Matt DeRienzo   A recession, then a collapse

Kyle Ellis   Let’s build our way out of this

Cristina Wilson   The year of the Instagram Story

Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

Rodney Gibbs   Tech workers turn to journalism

Amy King   Let’s amplify visual voice

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

John Keefe   Scooped by AI

Neha Gandhi   Filler killers

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism

Tim Carmody   Watch out for Spotify

C.W. Anderson   The social media apocalypse

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Evie Nagy   Pivot to mobile video frustration

Jessica Parker Gilbert   Design connects storytelling and strategy

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

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

Pia Frey   Address users as individuals

Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging

Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

Kinsey Wilson   Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Debra Adams Simmons   And a woman shall lead them

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

Andrew Losowsky   The year of resilience

Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first

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

José Zamora   Revenue-first journalism

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

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

Hossein Derakhshan   Television has won

Charo Henríquez   Training is an investment, not an expense

Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

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

David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

Carrie Brown-Smith   Transparency finally takes off

Zizi Papacharissi   Women come back

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

P. Kim Bui   The reckoning is only beginning

Kristen Muller   The year of the voter

Elizabeth Jensen   Show your work

Monika Bauerlein   The firehose of falsehood

Mario García   Storytelling finally adapts to mobile

Amy Webb   Listen to weak signals

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

Lanre Akinola   Making noise is not a strategy

Kathleen McElroy   Building a news video experience native to mobile

Mary Meehan   Real lives are at stake in rural areas

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

Jared Newman   Venture funding and digital news don’t mix

Michelle Ferrier   The year of the great reckoning

Mandy Velez   texting is lit rn, fam

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

Damon Krukowski   Reviving the alt-weekly soul

Jake Levine   The return to now

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

Usha Sahay   Wallets get opened

Basile Simon   We need better career paths for news nerds

Richard Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

Carlos Martínez de la Serna   The new journalism commons

Ståle Grut   Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks

Alastair Coote   The year of self-improvement

Almar Latour   Conquering calm

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

Jamie Mottram   From pageviews to t-shirts

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

Cory Haik   Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

Nathalie Malinarich   Peak push

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

Corey Johnson   The pro-fact resistance

Tanya Cordrey   Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention

Umbreen Bhatti   The trust problem isn’t new

Molly de Aguiar   Good journalism won’t be enough

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

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

Luke O'Neil   The end is already here

Dannagal G. Young   Stop covering politics as a game

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female

Nancy Watzman   Know thy TV

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

Julia Beizer   A longer view on the pivot

Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

S. Mitra Kalita   The arc of news and audience

Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)