My prediction: The news industry will continue to shine a light on itself, and we won’t like what we see. That’s good.
The end of 2016 brought a lot of soul searching to newsrooms throughout the country, as journalists worked to figure out how their political coverage led to just about everyone incorrectly predicting the results of last year’s presidential election. (Perhaps the biggest thing we learned is that maybe journalists shouldn’t be in the business of predicting elections. We’re reporters, not psychics.)
Newsrooms spent much of 2017 reacting to that: rearranging newsrooms, shifting assignments, moving resources to different places throughout America, questioning assumptions. This is good, and it will continue.
But in 2018, we will have another reason to search our collective journalist souls: the #MeToo movement. It’s revealed that much of the bad stuff we’ve previously covered in other industries is just as much a reality in our own. And it’s more than just sexual assault and harassment in newsrooms. Every new story of allegations taking down a media heavyweight reveals just how much our industry needs to improve. We need to take diversity seriously, in every way, from top to bottom. We need to move past a culture that makes some of the “talent” bigger than God, irreplaceable, and in their minds, able to do whatever they want. We need to get past newsroom cultures that value protection of the company as a “family” over adhering to our best ideals. We need to shine the light on ourselves a lot next year, and share a healthy amount of what we find with our audiences along the way.
What this means is that next year that we’ll continue to see coverage and criticism not just of how we cover politics, but how we cover ourselves. Newsrooms will continue to lose top, highly visible talent over bad reporting and/or bad workplace conduct. This means the way our newsrooms look at the end of 2018 might be very different than the way they look now.
I’m okay with that. We should keep shining the light.
Sam Sanders is a reporter and host of It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders at NPR.
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Richard J. Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
An Xiao Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
L. Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news