Among the predictions published in this series last year, none proved more prescient than Rachel Sklar’s “Women are Going to Get Loud.” It’s as if Rachel got an advance copy of Time’s Person of the Year issue — really advance.
The #MeToo movement has been an efficient juggernaut, blasting open decades of workplace hostility and harassment, and nowhere has it gotten more attention than in the field of media. (So much for “report the story, don’t become the story.”) Certainly, media is not the only industry so plagued by misogyny — there are others where it’s even more widespread. Nonetheless, it’s the media’s job to expose these outbreaks and it can’t even begin to help in that regard until it puts on its own oxygen mask.
The main consequences of this reckoning have been terminations, resignations, leaves of absence. And so it happens that there are suddenly a whole lot of vacancies in leadership roles across many media organizations. Already we’re seeing some of these roles filled by women. Expect that trend to accelerate and expand. There’s a surfeit of female talent that’s been sitting too long on the bench.
It never made sense for journalism to skew so heavily male at its highest ranks for so long. Media corporations can’t say with a straight face that it’s a “pipeline problem” with regards to women eager to study, work, and lead in journalism, as technology titans feebly do. According to Poynter, journalism schools award diplomas to women at a more than 2 to 1 ratio. Per ASNE, that ratio somehow flips in terms of newsroom supervisory roles, with women comprising only 37 percent. Media is storytelling, communication, information dissemination…we’re not talking about the defense industry or investment banking. These are skills women have long been stereotyped for having mastered — and yet, haven’t yet been deemed authoritative enough in to be awarded a mantle of leadership. Isn’t it ironic?
That all ends next year. My prediction is not solely that media leadership will be feminized, but that news itself will take on a new, more feminine, tone. No, this doesn’t mean more articles on weight loss and beauty trends. Instead, it means that women will be seen as reliable sources and the sexism embedded into articles about women’s issues and female public figures (“Who were they wearing?”) won’t make it past first edit. It also means we can expect newsroom resources dedicated to uncovering stories of other underserved and underreported communities. This means we can expect more two-way communication between storytellers and readers — something more authentic and constructive than a comments section.
I expect the female media takeover will bring also bring a novel remedy to the phenomenon of so-called fake news and the overall stratification of media along ideological lines. Don’t ask me how I know — it’s just my woman’s intuition. 2017 wasn’t pretty for our industry, but there’s hope for 2018. This time next year, “content is queen” will roll right off the tongue.
Jennifer Coogan is chief content officer of Newsela.
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
An Xiao Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention