The arc of news and audience

“There’s been a reckoning in digital media, and hopefully, a recognition that the very thing we once decried as commodity journalism is also necessary journalism. Like milk and coffee and electricity, news is needed. Facts, verified, analyzed, contextualized, matter.”

We need to do news better.

I’ve been a part of at least four new ventures in my career. Each began with a certain disdain for news. Each ended (two are still around) with the realization we needed to break more news.

There’s been a reckoning in digital media, and hopefully, a recognition that the very thing we once decried as commodity journalism is also necessary journalism. Like milk and coffee and electricity, news is needed. Facts, verified, analyzed, contextualized, matter.

We also need to change how and when we’re delivering them.

This is the arc of a news story. You can plot many events of this past year on the curve: inauguration, hurricanes, awards shows, mass shootings. (Oh, 2017, where to begin?)

This is where we tend to focus our delivery of journalism.

This is the arc of audience engagement with a live news story. Notice how the growth trajectory is at odds with how and when we deliver the news, pictured above.

In 2018, we must meet their demand and bring audience into the process of reporting in real time. Some of this has already been forced upon us. Witness the coverage of #MeToo and the swift downfall of those accused; I can’t help but think back to days when we didn’t report on sexual misconduct unless a police report had been filed. Another hashtag (#BlackLivesMatter) also reminds us to question the same sources that once set our news agenda.

It’s hard work to reconcile conflicting accounts in the moment, but that’s the difference between stenography and journalism. When we offer transparency into what we know, what we don’t know and how we know what we know, we gain trust. And we can certainly use more of that in 2018, too.

S. Mitra Kalita is the vice president for programming at CNN Digital.

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Almar Latour   Conquering calm

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Andrew Ramsammy   The year ownership mattered

Jamie Mottram   From pageviews to t-shirts

Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

Trushar Barot   The Jio-fication of India

Zizi Papacharissi   Women come back

Tanya Cordrey   Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention

Rachel Schallom   Better design helps differentiate opinion and news

Lucas Graves   From algorithms to institutions

Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

Lam Thuy Vo   Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest

Emma Carew Grovum   Newsroom culture becomes a priority

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc

C.W. Anderson   The social media apocalypse

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

Burt Herman   Things get real

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

Francesco Marconi   The year of machine-to-machine journalism

Cristina Wilson   The year of the Instagram Story

Pia Frey   Address users as individuals

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

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

Kyle Ellis   Let’s build our way out of this

Jake Levine   The return to now

Paul Ford   Go global

Tracie Powell   The muting of underserved voices

Nancy Watzman   Know thy TV

Cindy Royal   Your journalism curriculum is obsolete

Mariana Moura Santos   Think local, act global

Craig Newmark   Working together toward sustainable solutions

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Kawandeep Virdee   Zines had it right all along

An Xiao Mina   Memes and visuals come to the fore

Basile Simon   We need better career paths for news nerds

Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

Heather Bryant   Building the ecosystems for collaboration

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

José Zamora   Revenue-first journalism

Imaeyen Ibanga   Longform video leads the way

Hossein Derakhshan   Television has won

Kim Fox   Audience teams diversify their approach

Monika Bauerlein   The firehose of falsehood

Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)

Carrie Brown-Smith   Transparency finally takes off

Pete Brown   Push alerts, personalized

Molly de Aguiar   Good journalism won’t be enough

Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

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

Jessica Parker Gilbert   Design connects storytelling and strategy

Evie Nagy   Pivot to mobile video frustration

Caitlin Thompson   Podcasting models mature and diversify

Michael Kuntz   The only pivot that might work

Richard Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Ray Soto   VR reaches the next level

Pablo Boczkowski   The rise of skeptical reading

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

Jared Newman   Venture funding and digital news don’t mix

Christopher Meighan   Passive partnership is in the rearview

John Keefe   Scooped by AI

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

Charo Henríquez   Training is an investment, not an expense

Daniel Trielli   The rich get richer, the poor scramble

Mary Meehan   Real lives are at stake in rural areas

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

Tim Carmody   Watch out for Spotify

David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

Mandy Velez   texting is lit rn, fam

Ariana Tobin   Too tired to tap

Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Michelle Ferrier   The year of the great reckoning

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Mariano Blejman   News games rule

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

Edward Roussel   Eyes, ears, and brains

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

P. Kim Bui   The reckoning is only beginning

Mario García   Storytelling finally adapts to mobile

Justin Kosslyn   The year journalists become digital security experts

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

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

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

Matt DeRienzo   A recession, then a collapse

Nikki Usher   The year of The Washington Post

Usha Sahay   Wallets get opened

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

Vanessa K. DeLuca   Women’s voices take center stage

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

Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

Niketa Patel   Live journalism comes of age

Kathleen McElroy   Building a news video experience native to mobile

Amy King   Let’s amplify visual voice

S. Mitra Kalita   The arc of news and audience

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

Rick Berke   Value is the watchword

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

Corey Ford   The empire strikes back

Cory Haik   Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

Kinsey Wilson   Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up

Steve Grove   The midterms are an opportunity

Taylor Lorenz   Social and media will split

Dannagal G. Young   Stop covering politics as a game

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female

Umbreen Bhatti   The trust problem isn’t new

Ruth Palmer   Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Publishing less to give readers more

Neha Gandhi   Filler killers

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Nathalie Malinarich   Peak push

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

Amy Webb   Listen to weak signals

Matt Thompson   Here come the attention managers

Alastair Coote   The year of self-improvement

Raju Narisetti   Mirror, mirror on the wall

Corey Johnson   The pro-fact resistance

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

Julia Beizer   A longer view on the pivot

Alexios Mantzarlis   Moving fake news research out of the lab

Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán   The editorial meeting of the future

Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Sue Schardt   Jump the niche

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

Damon Krukowski   Reviving the alt-weekly soul

Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

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

Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first

Doris Truong   Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes

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

Alice Antheaume   Are you fluent in AI?

Jim Brady   With the people, not just of the people

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

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

Gordon Crovitz   Serving readers over advertisers

Carlos Martínez de la Serna   The new journalism commons

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

Rodney Gibbs   Tech workers turn to journalism

Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

Juleyka Lantigua   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

Michelle Garcia   Navigating journalistic transparency

Luke O'Neil   The end is already here

Elizabeth Jensen   Show your work

Ståle Grut   Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks

Joanne Lipman   Journalists inventing revenue streams

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

Kristen Muller   The year of the voter

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

Frédéric Filloux   External forces

Sam Ford   The year of investing in processes

Lanre Akinola   Making noise is not a strategy

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

Andrew Haeg   The year journalists become relationship builders

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

Adam Thomas   Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

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

Laura E. Davis   Writing answers before you know the question

Andrew Losowsky   The year of resilience

Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism