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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Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
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Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
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Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Richard J. Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
L. Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
An Xiao Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age