Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

“The winners will be the ones who have built a meaningful journalistic report that transcends, and likely capitalizes on, the platform moment.”

I have a jacket emblazoned with the phrase, “Suffering from realness.” The quote, if you didn’t already know, is from rapper and noted footwear purveyor Kanye West. His prose likely had nothing at all to do with the state of journalism,1 but that’s exactly why I had it airbrushed. I, along with two other of my best journo friends, co-opted Kanye to make cryptically public the commitment to powering through the tumultuous publishing seas for something worthy.

@sclary @tiffany99 i hope to god you brought your damn jackets // cc @juliabeizer

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Pivoting to video, forsaking O&O for distributed, hiring growth hackers, pursuing OTT, new ad products, subscriptions, live, visual — you name it. None of these things are inherently bad — all mere tactics in our transition. And yet they are villainized, by, well, us. 2018 will be no exception. However, here’s betting that it will also be a moment when the tide turns in favor of thinking about impact — realness — in a new way. The winners will be the ones who have built a meaningful journalistic report that transcends, and likely capitalizes on, the platform moment.

Out of the darkest moments come some of the best. Take the Weinstein effect and the speed at which those stories traveled. The entire #metoo network effect is impact at a pace and scale previously unimaginable. Yes, our business model is far from settled. But do not think for a moment that this sea change would be possible without platforms that reach 2 billion people. Sure, it comes with a high cost to businesses that once reaped a 60 percent margin. But the impact potential is even greater.

If you are existentially vexed about all of this, the question to ask yourself as it is all happening around you: Are you pivoting to impact? This might sound trite, but I mean it sincerely. Below, a starter “pivot to impact” moral compass!

If you are a journalist: Have you recently revealed something to your audience that they likely didn’t know before that helps them understand the context of our changing world? Important bonus: Did you try to make it reach as many people as possible?

If you work in product: Did you build something that people want, that possibly helps enable the above? (h/t @MarcusMoretti)

If you work on revenue: Are you focusing on how your publication can uniquely serve users or advertisers?

If you are a platform: Have you worked with a publishing partner either on helping to monetize their existing body of work or offered to pay them for their expert services? Have you worked to battle fake news?  

In all seriousness, I am a believer in where we are headed and the good work that’s being done along the way. That’s not to dismiss the challenges and tough calls required to get there. I’ll leave you with a line I often recite to myself and to my teams: If you focus on the story and focus on the user, you will not lose. I am betting on 2018 to value this anew.

Cory Haik is publisher of Mic.

  1. Honestly I should have reached out for comment, but I feel extremely confident in my stated take that these three words together are entirely unrelated to the journalism industry. ↩︎

Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

Tanya Cordrey   Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention

An Xiao Mina   Memes and visuals come to the fore

Tracie Powell   The muting of underserved voices

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

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

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

Ståle Grut   Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks

Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán   The editorial meeting of the future

Mandy Velez   texting is lit rn, fam

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

Vanessa K. DeLuca   Women’s voices take center stage

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

Pablo Boczkowski   The rise of skeptical reading

Pia Frey   Address users as individuals

S. Mitra Kalita   The arc of news and audience

Mariana Moura Santos   Think local, act global

Jake Levine   The return to now

Lam Thuy Vo   Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest

Rodney Gibbs   Tech workers turn to journalism

John Keefe   Scooped by AI

Mariano Blejman   News games rule

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

Michael Kuntz   The only pivot that might work

Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)

Carrie Brown-Smith   Transparency finally takes off

Almar Latour   Conquering calm

C.W. Anderson   The social media apocalypse

Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

Nathalie Malinarich   Peak push

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

Pete Brown   Push alerts, personalized

Jared Newman   Venture funding and digital news don’t mix

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

Nikki Usher   The year of The Washington Post

Kristen Muller   The year of the voter

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

Matt Thompson   Here come the attention managers

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

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

Kinsey Wilson   Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up

Jessica Parker Gilbert   Design connects storytelling and strategy

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

Raju Narisetti   Mirror, mirror on the wall

Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

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

Gordon Crovitz   Serving readers over advertisers

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

Andrew Haeg   The year journalists become relationship builders

Michelle Garcia   Navigating journalistic transparency

Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

Paul Ford   Go global

Kyle Ellis   Let’s build our way out of this

Matt DeRienzo   A recession, then a collapse

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

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

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

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

Justin Kosslyn   The year journalists become digital security experts

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

Basile Simon   We need better career paths for news nerds

José Zamora   Revenue-first journalism

Craig Newmark   Working together toward sustainable solutions

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

Amy Webb   Listen to weak signals

Adam Thomas   Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

Amy King   Let’s amplify visual voice

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Julia Beizer   A longer view on the pivot

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc

Juleyka Lantigua   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

Joanne Lipman   Journalists inventing revenue streams

Ariana Tobin   Too tired to tap

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Publishing less to give readers more

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

Steve Grove   The midterms are an opportunity

Kathleen McElroy   Building a news video experience native to mobile

P. Kim Bui   The reckoning is only beginning

Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Evie Nagy   Pivot to mobile video frustration

Corey Johnson   The pro-fact resistance

Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

Kim Fox   Audience teams diversify their approach

Alexios Mantzarlis   Moving fake news research out of the lab

Imaeyen Ibanga   Longform video leads the way

Rachel Schallom   Better design helps differentiate opinion and news

Damon Krukowski   Reviving the alt-weekly soul

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Taylor Lorenz   Social and media will split

Umbreen Bhatti   The trust problem isn’t new

Ruth Palmer   Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities

Lucas Graves   From algorithms to institutions

Niketa Patel   Live journalism comes of age

Debra Adams Simmons   And a woman shall lead them

Usha Sahay   Wallets get opened

David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

Trushar Barot   The Jio-fication of India

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

Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

Andrew Losowsky   The year of resilience

Emma Carew Grovum   Newsroom culture becomes a priority

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

Jamie Mottram   From pageviews to t-shirts

Nancy Watzman   Know thy TV

Mario García   Storytelling finally adapts to mobile

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

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

Molly de Aguiar   Good journalism won’t be enough

Zizi Papacharissi   Women come back

Hossein Derakhshan   Television has won

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

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

Monika Bauerlein   The firehose of falsehood

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

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

Cindy Royal   Your journalism curriculum is obsolete

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Carlos Martínez de la Serna   The new journalism commons

Cory Haik   Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

Elizabeth Jensen   Show your work

Alice Antheaume   Are you fluent in AI?

Charo Henríquez   Training is an investment, not an expense

Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging

Richard Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Daniel Trielli   The rich get richer, the poor scramble

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

Corey Ford   The empire strikes back

Lanre Akinola   Making noise is not a strategy

Luke O'Neil   The end is already here

Edward Roussel   Eyes, ears, and brains

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

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

Cristina Wilson   The year of the Instagram Story

Caitlin Thompson   Podcasting models mature and diversify

Michelle Ferrier   The year of the great reckoning

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Alastair Coote   The year of self-improvement

Francesco Marconi   The year of machine-to-machine journalism

Tim Carmody   Watch out for Spotify

Burt Herman   Things get real

Dannagal G. Young   Stop covering politics as a game

Doris Truong   Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

Kawandeep Virdee   Zines had it right all along

Neha Gandhi   Filler killers

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

Jim Brady   With the people, not just of the people

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Andrew Ramsammy   The year ownership mattered

Sue Schardt   Jump the niche

Laura E. Davis   Writing answers before you know the question

Mary Meehan   Real lives are at stake in rural areas

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism

Ray Soto   VR reaches the next level

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

Rick Berke   Value is the watchword

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

Christopher Meighan   Passive partnership is in the rearview

Frédéric Filloux   External forces

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

Heather Bryant   Building the ecosystems for collaboration

Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

Sam Ford   The year of investing in processes

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first