Journalists have a distant, fraught relationship with “the public.”
As a young journalist, you learn by osmosis that the public is who you seek out for quotes, local color, “man on the street” colloquialisms. The public is who calls in to your show, comments on your stories, turns up at events.
Sometimes what the public says is angry, or rude, or racist, or homophobic. Occasionally, it’s poignant or wise. But on balance, the public is seen as unpredictable, untrustworthy.
We are taught not to be part of the public, but to stand apart from the public. To paraphrase Edna St. Vincent Millay, journalists can love humanity, but hate people.
This year, a meaningful number of journalists will understand that their deeply encoded aloofness to the public is really the mutation that’s afflicting journalism — and they will begin to rethink and recode their work as both reporters and relationship-builders.
Business imperatives will require it. The momentum will continue to rapidly shift away from ad-based models for supporting journalism to memberships and subscriptions. Each piece of content we create, then, becomes less a bid for eyeballs and more an opportunity to create trust, loyalty, and a feeling of being served by journalism (vs. entertained, scared, titillated, or enraged).
More fledgling and startup projects like Discourse Media in Canada; De Correspondent’s new U.S. offering, The Correspondent; Outlier Media in Detroit; and Reach NC Voices in North Carolina will nimbly experiment with relationship-building approaches, ultimately showing slower-moving “legacy” media how it’s done in the service of journalism and the longer-term sustainability of our work.
More established outlets like ProPublica, The Guardian, and The Texas Tribune will refine and spread new metrics — knowing that you only get what you measure — to reorient newsroom reward structures around building deeper relationships with smaller communities vs. larger but less engaged drive-by audiences.
More audience members (a.k.a. the public), who increasingly expect personalization and localization in all of their online commerce, will get frustrated when — like everyone else — they get a standard form email to renew a subscription to a news organization whose stories they have commented on, whose personalities feel almost like friends and whose work they feel personally invested in.
They might ask: “Who do they think I am?” Good question.
Andrew Haeg is founder and CEO of GroundSource.
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Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
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Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
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Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
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Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
An Xiao Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook