Standing up for us and for each other

“We’ll stop using objectivity as an excuse for a weak and lazy narrative and step forcefully into giving voice to those who are perpetually harmed and ignored. We’ll be brutally fair and speak up, especially against bullies.”

Despite a devastating blow to journalism post-election, this has been an inspiring opportunity for us to have humility, listen better to our audiences better, and take a stand for our audiences and our work. We, with our audiences, are taking steps towards reversing the normalization of a toxic public discourse. Case in point: #MeToo.

The #MeToo movement has been for me an unexpected, most perfect, and poignant nexus of high-quality journalism and the public discourse, namely on social media. Powerful, compelling investigative reporting culminated in (and worked in tandem with) the shifting of a longstanding public narrative inclined to shame survivors and cover for perpetrators. As an industry, we’ve also been reckoning with the ways in which our own culture has perpetuated misogynistic, abusive behavior.

It’s powerful when journalists and news organizations aren’t afraid to take a stand: reminding the public that we are on their side, and we won’t compromise the truth by refusing to shine a light on our own skeletons. We do it by listening with integrity and vigilantly seeking the truth. We do it by acknowledging that our platforms are tools of power and admit how our very own used them as weapons against the vulnerable.

This is where repairing trust between communities and news organizations begins.

In 2018, I expect news organizations and audiences to remember these lessons and get brave again on how we do our work together:

— We’ll stop using objectivity as an excuse for a weak and lazy narrative and step forcefully into giving voice to those who are perpetually harmed and ignored. We’ll be brutally fair and speak up, especially against bullies. We’ll recognize and uplift courage when we see it.

— We’re going to get smarter about working with social media platforms to get in front of what we do best — telling stories well and truthfully — and know that this is the first step to a long-sustaining relationship with our communities.

— We’ll self-reflect and be confident enough to admit our own mistakes and failings. And we’ll do better.

2018 will be the year journalism gets its swagger again in the face of an anti-media administration and an audience feeling the pain of this toxic public conversation. I still bet on humanity, and I have already seen strong signs of journalism’s role in restoring my faith in humanity this past year.

Jennifer Choi is associate director for strategic partnerships at the News Integrity Initiative.

Rachel Schallom   Better design helps differentiate opinion and news

Usha Sahay   Wallets get opened

Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

Richard Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Pablo Boczkowski   The rise of skeptical reading

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

Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

Ruth Palmer   Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

Cindy Royal   Your journalism curriculum is obsolete

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

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

Michael Kuntz   The only pivot that might work

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Heather Bryant   Building the ecosystems for collaboration

Raju Narisetti   Mirror, mirror on the wall

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

Lucas Graves   From algorithms to institutions

Kyle Ellis   Let’s build our way out of this

Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán   The editorial meeting of the future

Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Damon Krukowski   Reviving the alt-weekly soul

John Keefe   Scooped by AI

Jim Brady   With the people, not just of the people

Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

Ariana Tobin   Too tired to tap

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

Tracie Powell   The muting of underserved voices

Paul Ford   Go global

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

P. Kim Bui   The reckoning is only beginning

Monika Bauerlein   The firehose of falsehood

Joanne Lipman   Journalists inventing revenue streams

Mario García   Storytelling finally adapts to mobile

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

Mary Meehan   Real lives are at stake in rural areas

Adam Thomas   Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

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

Amy Webb   Listen to weak signals

Nathalie Malinarich   Peak push

Gordon Crovitz   Serving readers over advertisers

Matt Thompson   Here come the attention managers

S. Mitra Kalita   The arc of news and audience

Kawandeep Virdee   Zines had it right all along

Alastair Coote   The year of self-improvement

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

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

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

Frédéric Filloux   External forces

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

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Publishing less to give readers more

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

Carrie Brown-Smith   Transparency finally takes off

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

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

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

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

Molly de Aguiar   Good journalism won’t be enough

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism

David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

Tanya Cordrey   Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

Charo Henríquez   Training is an investment, not an expense

Jared Newman   Venture funding and digital news don’t mix

Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first

Kinsey Wilson   Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up

Daniel Trielli   The rich get richer, the poor scramble

Tim Carmody   Watch out for Spotify

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

Alice Antheaume   Are you fluent in AI?

Kristen Muller   The year of the voter

Basile Simon   We need better career paths for news nerds

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

Craig Newmark   Working together toward sustainable solutions

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

Kim Fox   Audience teams diversify their approach

Amy King   Let’s amplify visual voice

Ray Soto   VR reaches the next level

Andrew Losowsky   The year of resilience

Ståle Grut   Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks

Rick Berke   Value is the watchword

Emma Carew Grovum   Newsroom culture becomes a priority

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

Steve Grove   The midterms are an opportunity

Jessica Parker Gilbert   Design connects storytelling and strategy

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

Corey Johnson   The pro-fact resistance

Pete Brown   Push alerts, personalized

Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

Rodney Gibbs   Tech workers turn to journalism

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

Andrew Ramsammy   The year ownership mattered

Trushar Barot   The Jio-fication of India

Pia Frey   Address users as individuals

Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

Mariano Blejman   News games rule

Sue Schardt   Jump the niche

Carlos Martínez de la Serna   The new journalism commons

Corey Ford   The empire strikes back

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Nikki Usher   The year of The Washington Post

Mandy Velez   texting is lit rn, fam

Dannagal G. Young   Stop covering politics as a game

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc

Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

Sam Ford   The year of investing in processes

Luke O'Neil   The end is already here

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

Julia Beizer   A longer view on the pivot

Evie Nagy   Pivot to mobile video frustration

Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

Debra Adams Simmons   And a woman shall lead them

Nancy Watzman   Know thy TV

Cristina Wilson   The year of the Instagram Story

Jamie Mottram   From pageviews to t-shirts

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

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

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Niketa Patel   Live journalism comes of age

Andrew Haeg   The year journalists become relationship builders

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

C.W. Anderson   The social media apocalypse

Laura E. Davis   Writing answers before you know the question

Kathleen McElroy   Building a news video experience native to mobile

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Burt Herman   Things get real

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

Lam Thuy Vo   Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest

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

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

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

Christopher Meighan   Passive partnership is in the rearview

Mariana Moura Santos   Think local, act global

Michelle Garcia   Navigating journalistic transparency

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

Lanre Akinola   Making noise is not a strategy

Elizabeth Jensen   Show your work

Almar Latour   Conquering calm

Taylor Lorenz   Social and media will split

Juleyka Lantigua   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

An Xiao Mina   Memes and visuals come to the fore

Umbreen Bhatti   The trust problem isn’t new

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

Michelle Ferrier   The year of the great reckoning

José Zamora   Revenue-first journalism

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

Jake Levine   The return to now

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

Hossein Derakhshan   Television has won

Matt DeRienzo   A recession, then a collapse

Francesco Marconi   The year of machine-to-machine journalism

Edward Roussel   Eyes, ears, and brains

Caitlin Thompson   Podcasting models mature and diversify

Imaeyen Ibanga   Longform video leads the way

Alexios Mantzarlis   Moving fake news research out of the lab

Vanessa K. DeLuca   Women’s voices take center stage

Zizi Papacharissi   Women come back

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

Doris Truong   Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes

Cory Haik   Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

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

Neha Gandhi   Filler killers

Justin Kosslyn   The year journalists become digital security experts

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female