Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

“As an industry, and as individuals, we’re realizing that we need to invest in organizational change, personal growth, and the human connections that will get us there.”

A few weeks ago, I found myself in a restaurant underneath the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, the central square of Kiev. I was talking to Taras, the impressive founder of a new type of local news organization that seems to be doing everything right. At the center of their strategy, he told me, is audience trust and community engagement. They deliver the right stories at the right time in the right format. Working closely with local businesses, they may have even cracked the revenue model in an exceptionally tough advertising and regulatory market.

What I witnessed in Taras is something I’ve seen time and again throughout 2017: an unparalleled openness. A willingness for people in journalism to connect and honestly share experiences, good and bad, that might further the industry.

With that, I see an opportunity in 2018 to turn the informal sharing we see in conversations like this into something more substantive through mentorships.

The media is under fire like never before. At the same time, this is what the European media innovation ecosystem looks like right now:

  • Engaged journalism enterprises like De Correspondent, CORRECT!V, and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism are making waves internationally.
  • Innovative storytelling and investigative outfits like Outriders, Society, publish.org, Tvoe Mista, ForSet, Piqd, and Atlatszo are finding new audiences and revenues.
  • Startups like Neva Labs, Opinary, Kaleida, Sceenic, and Trint (to name but a few) are ramping up and extending runways with bold ideas and new technology.
  • Even the traditional publishers and broadcasters are making significant breakthroughs. Just look at Spiegel Online’s award-winning data projects or Euronews’ progress with immersive storytelling.

To help sustain this new landscape, new funding is coming online with the emergence of venture capital hubs like Next Media Accelerator, the continuation of Google’s Digital News Initiative, and increased interest from donors like the Omidyar Network and the Philanthropic Alliance for Solidarity and Democracy in Europe.

In 2018, the experiences of these new initiatives will be the catalyst for even more innovation. Mentorships are essential to accelerate these connections. As an industry, and as individuals, we’re realizing that we need to invest in organizational change, personal growth, and the human connections that will get us there. Mentorships add structure and value to the informal sharing of ideas we experience at conferences and in Slack channels.

Without more structure, all the learning experienced by these various groups will remain siloed (and their monetary investments unfulfilled). Successful entrepreneurs will take vital experience into closed commercial settings. Startups won’t achieve sustainability or exit. Entrepreneurs will fail and quit, newsrooms won’t leverage innovation from within, and students will graduate being unable to find employment.

In 2018, we will see more training programmes, grants, and workshops with knowledge exchange and leadership support at the core. The value of mentorships is already being demonstrated through programs and ideas from our friends at the Knight Foundation, Poynter Institute, ICIJ, Code4Africa, News Integrity Initiative, Google News Lab, Euractiv, Next Journalism Prize, Hamburg Media School, and the Media Lab Bayern. Our own News Impact Academy, Journalism Grants, and Engaged Journalism Accelerator are being calibrated to feature mentorship at the heart of what they do.

We will also see mentorship happen outside of these programs. The best thing about this quiet revolution is that anyone can do it. It starts with an invitation to coffee, a Twitter DM, or a quick question over email. Start with people you know. Connect with people who you can help too, and who will find it a beneficial and rewarding experience. Reach out, explain what you want from the relationship, and take it from there.

Of all the things I’ve done this year, kickstarting my own mentoring relationships, both as mentor and mentee, has been the most rewarding. I’ve visited over 20 countries this year, and from Kiev to Krakow, Berlin to Brussels, and Riga to Rome, the challenges we share unite us. Geopolitics and polarization and advertising markets might vary, but the value in sharing experiences, failures, and victories remains.

Leading any part of an organization in this climate is really hard. If 2018 proves to be anything like 2017, we’re all going to need someone to talk to. If you don’t already have a mentor, 2018 will be the year you get one.

Cindy Royal   Your journalism curriculum is obsolete

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

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

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

Corey Ford   The empire strikes back

Kathleen McElroy   Building a news video experience native to mobile

Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

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

Julia Beizer   A longer view on the pivot

Andrew Ramsammy   The year ownership mattered

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

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

Debra Adams Simmons   And a woman shall lead them

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

Nathalie Malinarich   Peak push

Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

Carrie Brown-Smith   Transparency finally takes off

Raju Narisetti   Mirror, mirror on the wall

Caitlin Thompson   Podcasting models mature and diversify

Elizabeth Jensen   Show your work

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Jared Newman   Venture funding and digital news don’t mix

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

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

Luke O'Neil   The end is already here

Nik Usher   The year of The Washington Post

Justin Kosslyn   The year journalists become digital security experts

Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

Alexios Mantzarlis   Moving fake news research out of the lab

Laura E. Davis   Writing answers before you know the question

Mandy Velez   texting is lit rn, fam

Cory Haik   Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

Michael Kuntz   The only pivot that might work

Jim Brady   With the people, not just of the people

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

Sam Ford   The year of investing in processes

Damon Krukowski   Reviving the alt-weekly soul

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

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

Andrew Haeg   The year journalists become relationship builders

Doris Truong   Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes

Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

Pablo Boczkowski   The rise of skeptical reading

Juleyka Lantigua   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

Usha Sahay   Wallets get opened

Umbreen Bhatti   The trust problem isn’t new

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

Mary Meehan   Real lives are at stake in rural areas

Ruth Palmer   Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Jake Levine   The return to now

AX Mina   Memes and visuals come to the fore

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc

Trushar Barot   The Jio-fication of India

Dannagal G. Young   Stop covering politics as a game

Christopher Meighan   Passive partnership is in the rearview

Edward Roussel   Eyes, ears, and brains

Heather Bryant   Building the ecosystems for collaboration

Carlos Martínez de la Serna   The new journalism commons

Mariano Blejman   News games rule

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Andrew Losowsky   The year of resilience

Michelle Ferrier   The year of the great reckoning

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female

Molly de Aguiar   Good journalism won’t be enough

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

Rodney Gibbs   Tech workers turn to journalism

Pete Brown   Push alerts, personalized

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

Emma Carew Grovum   Newsroom culture becomes a priority

Rachel Schallom   Better design helps differentiate opinion and news

Ray Soto   VR reaches the next level

Lam Thuy Vo   Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest

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

Hossein Derakhshan   Television has won

Kawandeep Virdee   Zines had it right all along

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

Tanya Cordrey   Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Publishing less to give readers more

Kinsey Wilson   Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up

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

Michelle Garcia   Navigating journalistic transparency

José Zamora   Revenue-first journalism

Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

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

Kyle Ellis   Let’s build our way out of this

Adam Thomas   Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

Rick Berke   Value is the watchword

Jessica Parker Gilbert   Design connects storytelling and strategy

Sue Schardt   Jump the niche

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

Richard Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Neha Gandhi   Filler killers

P. Kim Bui   The reckoning is only beginning

Amy Webb   Listen to weak signals

Amy King   Let’s amplify visual voice

Pia Frey   Address users as individuals

Zizi Papacharissi   Women come back

Evie Nagy   Pivot to mobile video frustration

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

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

S. Mitra Kalita   The arc of news and audience

Joanne Lipman   Journalists inventing revenue streams

Burt Herman   Things get real

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

Charo Henríquez   Training is an investment, not an expense

Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

Cristina Wilson   The year of the Instagram Story

Kim Fox   Audience teams diversify their approach

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

Daniel Trielli   The rich get richer, the poor scramble

John Keefe   Scooped by AI

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

Ariana Tobin   Too tired to tap

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

Taylor Lorenz   Social and media will split

Alice Antheaume   Are you fluent in AI?

Mariana Moura Santos   Think local, act global

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Craig Newmark   Working together toward sustainable solutions

Jamie Mottram   From pageviews to t-shirts

Lucas Graves   From algorithms to institutions

Kristen Muller   The year of the voter

Steve Grove   The midterms are an opportunity

Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging

Francesco Marconi   The year of machine-to-machine journalism

Mario García   Storytelling finally adapts to mobile

Nancy Watzman   Know thy TV

Basile Simon   We need better career paths for news nerds

Tim Carmody   Watch out for Spotify

Corey Johnson   The pro-fact resistance

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

Ståle Grut   Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

Paul Ford   Go global

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Frédéric Filloux   External forces

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

C.W. Anderson   The social media apocalypse

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

Niketa Patel   Live journalism comes of age

Monika Bauerlein   The firehose of falsehood

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

Gordon Crovitz   Serving readers over advertisers

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

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

Almar Latour   Conquering calm

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

Lanre Akinola   Making noise is not a strategy

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

Imaeyen Ibanga   Longform video leads the way

Matt DeRienzo   A recession, then a collapse

Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first

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

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

Matt Thompson   Here come the attention managers

Vanessa K. DeLuca   Women’s voices take center stage

Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán   The editorial meeting of the future

Tracie Powell   The muting of underserved voices

Alastair Coote   The year of self-improvement