I predict that this will be the year when, for the first time, a journalism organization will fill the position of an impact producer.
The debate is still open about where journalism ends and advocacy begins, and it is important for journalists to keep an attentive eye on those lines. However, very few will now debate that journalism has a mission — it always has. Media is, at its best, at the forefront of halting the biggest abuses. At a minimum, it is capable of defining conversations and setting the agenda. Columbia University’s Anya Schiffrin in Global Muckraking articulates better than anyone that “journalists have been calling attention to some of the same problems for more than a hundred years.” Their writing has had significant impact and a wave of “committed and campaigning journalism” always existed in moments where a “general climate of intellectual ferment and political activism” called for it. This sounds like today!
Questions of impact are at the core of the role that journalism ought to be playing. Journalism matters, but the question we are posed with is: What journalism matters most? As media consumers, we have access to more and better content that we can ever digest in many lifetimes; the problem journalism faces is how most effectively to inform, engage, target, and influence the right audiences with the right content. Whether it is to inform citizens, or to affect perceptions about their reality, the media needs a transformational purpose. Parallel to the crises of media, but completely related, the media still needs to repurpose itself, a service, to produce news that can be used.
I would say all media organizations believe that they tell stories and provide information because they want to help their audience to make better choices, be aware of something, or change their social and political environments for the better. The question of impact becomes vital.
Impact, however each organization defines it, is achieved through journalism, but with the help of the audience, a community of interest, or civil society in general, this impact can be multiply exponentially: to achieve systematic change, media needs deep structural relationships with the community they serve, and take the media-driven effects to meaningful collective impact.
This will be the role of the impact producer, common already in the documentary space. Just as films have producers to manage the creative and financial process from script to screen, they also need impact producers to take the film campaign from production to impact.
An impact producer will be someone who will help the newsroom by helping define the ambition of the content produced, overseeing the education, outreach, and online community management, and playing the roles of evaluator and fundraiser.
Miguel Castro is senior officer for global media partnerships at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
An Xiao Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)