Television has won

“Television, old or new, is the medium of our post-Enlightenment era when text and reason are substituted by images and emotions. To be brief and blunt, Trump is just the beginning.”

The Internet used to be something you read. In 2018, it will officially be something you watch.

Two decades after the web posed an unexpectedly serious challenge to television in the 1990s, we can now comfortably say television has won. It has conquered the internet, the media, and thereby the world.

Not just as a medium, but as a discourse which has deeply affected our understanding of ourselves and the world. Its linear, centralized, emotion-driven, and photography-centered form has prevailed over the decentralized, text-based, and reason-driven form of the World Wide Web, which was itself inspired by books and newspapers.

Not only is there a lot more investment into video journalism, television’s business models, broadcast or cable, are also dominating: from video ads before or in the middle of a clip, product placement, and monthly subscriptions. This is while digital or analogue ads for text-based media are plummeting.

Even criticism against “pivot to video” is more about “pivot to short videos” rather than videos altogether. Everybody is spending big cash on longform videos.

There are other similarities. Just as TV producers need cable or broadcast distributors to reach their audience, digital media now increasingly need social platforms such as Facebook or YouTube instead of their own websites or mobile apps. This wasn’t the case when the press had their own printing facilities or distribution systems.

Ideas such as “prime time” have also migrated from television to social media. You can’t tweet or post on Facebook or Instagram anytime any more. It has to happen at certain times to receive most engagement and thereby visibility.

This is all in addition to recent ideas such as YouTube TV, or Twitter and Facebook’s live broadcasts of conventional TV products. These are quite literally a re-imagination of television in the age of mobile internet.

The internet has become a neo-TV and we’re going to face the scary consequences of a TV-dominated society, some of which Neil Postman explained in his 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death.

Television, old or new, is the medium of our post-Enlightenment era when text and reason are substituted by images and emotions. To be brief and blunt, Trump is just the beginning.

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Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

Nikki Usher   The year of The Washington Post

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

Luke O'Neil   The end is already here

Matt DeRienzo   A recession, then a collapse

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

C.W. Anderson   The social media apocalypse

Lanre Akinola   Making noise is not a strategy

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Paul Ford   Go global

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

Carlos Martínez de la Serna   The new journalism commons

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Ariana Tobin   Too tired to tap

Zizi Papacharissi   Women come back

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

Corey Ford   The empire strikes back

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

P. Kim Bui   The reckoning is only beginning

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

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

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first

Amy King   Let’s amplify visual voice

Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

Pablo Boczkowski   The rise of skeptical reading

Monika Bauerlein   The firehose of falsehood

Mary Meehan   Real lives are at stake in rural areas

Elizabeth Jensen   Show your work

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

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

Cindy Royal   Your journalism curriculum is obsolete

Neha Gandhi   Filler killers

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

Pia Frey   Address users as individuals

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

Frédéric Filloux   External forces

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

Gordon Crovitz   Serving readers over advertisers

Doris Truong   Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes

Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

Matt Thompson   Here come the attention managers

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

Alexios Mantzarlis   Moving fake news research out of the lab

Juleyka Lantigua   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

Mariano Blejman   News games rule

Michelle Garcia   Navigating journalistic transparency

Rodney Gibbs   Tech workers turn to journalism

Mandy Velez   texting is lit rn, fam

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

Tanya Cordrey   Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention

Jamie Mottram   From pageviews to t-shirts

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female

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

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

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

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Kim Fox   Audience teams diversify their approach

Imaeyen Ibanga   Longform video leads the way

Mario García   Storytelling finally adapts to mobile

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

Alice Antheaume   Are you fluent in AI?

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

Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

Andrew Haeg   The year journalists become relationship builders

Vanessa K. DeLuca   Women’s voices take center stage

Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging

Laura E. Davis   Writing answers before you know the question

Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

Debra Adams Simmons   And a woman shall lead them

Usha Sahay   Wallets get opened

S. Mitra Kalita   The arc of news and audience

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

Almar Latour   Conquering calm

Richard Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Ruth Palmer   Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

Kathleen McElroy   Building a news video experience native to mobile

Hossein Derakhshan   Television has won

Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán   The editorial meeting of the future

Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

Pete Brown   Push alerts, personalized

Kawandeep Virdee   Zines had it right all along

Nathalie Malinarich   Peak push

Amy Webb   Listen to weak signals

Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

Edward Roussel   Eyes, ears, and brains

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Publishing less to give readers more

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

John Keefe   Scooped by AI

Alastair Coote   The year of self-improvement

Molly de Aguiar   Good journalism won’t be enough

Rachel Schallom   Better design helps differentiate opinion and news

Daniel Trielli   The rich get richer, the poor scramble

Jared Newman   Venture funding and digital news don’t mix

Justin Kosslyn   The year journalists become digital security experts

Carrie Brown-Smith   Transparency finally takes off

Kinsey Wilson   Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up

Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)

Ståle Grut   Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks

José Zamora   Revenue-first journalism

Caitlin Thompson   Podcasting models mature and diversify

Michael Kuntz   The only pivot that might work

Dannagal G. Young   Stop covering politics as a game

Joanne Lipman   Journalists inventing revenue streams

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

Steve Grove   The midterms are an opportunity

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

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

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

Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

Cristina Wilson   The year of the Instagram Story

Kyle Ellis   Let’s build our way out of this

Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Sue Schardt   Jump the niche

Cory Haik   Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

Basile Simon   We need better career paths for news nerds

Emma Carew Grovum   Newsroom culture becomes a priority

Christopher Meighan   Passive partnership is in the rearview

Rick Berke   Value is the watchword

Mariana Moura Santos   Think local, act global

Michelle Ferrier   The year of the great reckoning

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

Craig Newmark   Working together toward sustainable solutions

Andrew Ramsammy   The year ownership mattered

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Charo Henríquez   Training is an investment, not an expense

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc

Lucas Graves   From algorithms to institutions

Burt Herman   Things get real

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

Jessica Parker Gilbert   Design connects storytelling and strategy

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism

Niketa Patel   Live journalism comes of age

Francesco Marconi   The year of machine-to-machine journalism

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

An Xiao Mina   Memes and visuals come to the fore

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Adam Thomas   Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

Taylor Lorenz   Social and media will split

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

Raju Narisetti   Mirror, mirror on the wall

Tracie Powell   The muting of underserved voices

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

Umbreen Bhatti   The trust problem isn’t new

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

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

Lam Thuy Vo   Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest

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

Ray Soto   VR reaches the next level

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

Heather Bryant   Building the ecosystems for collaboration

Evie Nagy   Pivot to mobile video frustration

Jim Brady   With the people, not just of the people

Andrew Losowsky   The year of resilience

Tim Carmody   Watch out for Spotify

Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

Damon Krukowski   Reviving the alt-weekly soul

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Trushar Barot   The Jio-fication of India

Jake Levine   The return to now

Sam Ford   The year of investing in processes

Kristen Muller   The year of the voter

Julia Beizer   A longer view on the pivot

Nancy Watzman   Know thy TV

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

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