The year of resilience

“It would be understandable for journalists to retreat altogether from engaging with people online, in an attempt at self protection. This would however help these antagonists achieve their goals of undermining trust in journalism and reporting.”

In 2018, journalists will continue to face threats from antagonists who — for political motivations, driven by a desire to create chaos, or both — are trying to disrupt and distract them from their work.

Fortunately, journalists will be able to respond to these threats more effectively in the coming year, thanks to an increased level of support and preparation from their newsrooms.

Among other things, senior newsroom editors will:

— create new provisions and training that help protect staff against doxing, harassment, and threats

— learn to recognize symptoms of secondary trauma and PTSD in their colleagues, and share that information widely

— be much more careful about amplifing members of extremist fringe groups, who often mask their true beliefs in return for access and soft-focus profiles

— increase the diversity of the newsroom, thereby increasing the number of people among the staff who have experienced such abuse and antagonism, and can be tasked as part of their job to help design effective responses

— make sure that everyone is aware that a casual email, a seemingly off-the-record phone conversation, or an offhand chat in a bar, might be a part of a deliberate sting to discredit the organization and get the journalist fired

— share lessons and best practices with other organizations, in order to develop stronger responses

Freelancers, who act in the name of the organization but with far fewer protections, will also be covered by this work.

At the same time, journalists will learn how to balance these actions with the need to continue to engage with, and listen to, their actual communities.

In the face of such attacks, it would be understandable for journalists to retreat altogether from engaging with people online, in an attempt at self protection. This would however help these antagonists achieve their goals of undermining trust in journalism and reporting, by further distancing journalists from the lived experiences of their audiences.

Thankfully, there are now tools (including ours) that encourage audience engagement in more flexible and protected spaces than social media platforms, tools that help journalists build deeper connections with the communities that they serve, while being less vulnerable to abuse. By creating strong bonds with their communities, we will also see community members step up to help in the fight against these negative forces.

In 2018, we can expect the efforts of the antagonists to increase. This is the year that journalism responds by taking these threats seriously, and by learning how to protect itself.

Andrew Losowsky is the project lead of The Coral Project at Mozilla.

Amy King   Let’s amplify visual voice

Ruth Palmer   Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities

Vanessa K. DeLuca   Women’s voices take center stage

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

Francesco Marconi   The year of machine-to-machine journalism

An Xiao Mina   Memes and visuals come to the fore

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

Emma Carew Grovum   Newsroom culture becomes a priority

Basile Simon   We need better career paths for news nerds

C.W. Anderson   The social media apocalypse

Kinsey Wilson   Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up

Carrie Brown-Smith   Transparency finally takes off

Neha Gandhi   Filler killers

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

Adam Thomas   Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor

Amy Webb   Listen to weak signals

Cristina Wilson   The year of the Instagram Story

Kristen Muller   The year of the voter

Sydette Harry   Listen to your corner and watch for the hook

Matt DeRienzo   A recession, then a collapse

Matt Boggie   The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea

Felix Salmon   Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin

Jarrod Dicker   Honesty in advertising

Dan Newman   A return to trust

Nikki Usher   The year of The Washington Post

Mi-Ai Parrish   Blockchain and trust

Alastair Coote   The year of self-improvement

Daniel Trielli   The rich get richer, the poor scramble

Damon Krukowski   Reviving the alt-weekly soul

Niketa Patel   Live journalism comes of age

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

Pete Brown   Push alerts, personalized

Matt Thompson   Here come the attention managers

Lam Thuy Vo   Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest

Pia Frey   Address users as individuals

P. Kim Bui   The reckoning is only beginning

Borja Echevarría   TV goes digital, digital goes TV

Rachel Schallom   Better design helps differentiate opinion and news

Andrew Haeg   The year journalists become relationship builders

Jake Levine   The return to now

Trushar Barot   The Jio-fication of India

Alfred Hermida   Going beyond mobile-first

Cindy Royal   Your journalism curriculum is obsolete

Matt Carlson   Attacks on the press will get worse

Andrew Losowsky   The year of resilience

Andrew Ramsammy   The year ownership mattered

Rubina Madan Fillion   Unlocking the potential of AI

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

Mary Walter-Brown   Show a little vulnerability

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

Nancy Watzman   Know thy TV

Rachel Davis Mersey   AI, with real smarts

Feli Sánchez   The year for guerrilla user research

Kim Fox   Audience teams diversify their approach

Doris Truong   Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes

Hannah Cassius   The year of the echo-chamber escapists

Raju Narisetti   Mirror, mirror on the wall

Craig Newmark   Working together toward sustainable solutions

Eric Nuzum   Beyond the narrative arc

Nushin Rashidian   Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives

Laura E. Davis   Writing answers before you know the question

Jessica Parker Gilbert   Design connects storytelling and strategy

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   Skepticism and narcissism

Christopher Meighan   Passive partnership is in the rearview

Renée Kaplan   The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)

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

Julia Beizer   A longer view on the pivot

Charo Henríquez   Training is an investment, not an expense

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Publishing less to give readers more

Alexios Mantzarlis   Moving fake news research out of the lab

Brian Lam   Sketchy ethics around product reviews

Molly de Aguiar   Good journalism won’t be enough

Juliette De Maeyer   A responsible press criticism

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

Lanre Akinola   Making noise is not a strategy

Edward Roussel   Eyes, ears, and brains

Dheerja Kaur   Fun with subscription products

Mike Caulfield   Refactoring media literacy for the networked age

John Keefe   Scooped by AI

Caitlin Thompson   Podcasting models mature and diversify

Rodney Benson   Better, less read, and less trusted

Taylor Lorenz   Social and media will split

Luke O'Neil   The end is already here

Joyce Barnathan   It will be harder to bury the news

José Zamora   Revenue-first journalism

Kyle Ellis   Let’s build our way out of this

Michelle Ferrier   The year of the great reckoning

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

Juleyka Lantigua-Williams   Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time

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

Alice Antheaume   Are you fluent in AI?

Almar Latour   Conquering calm

Michelle Garcia   Navigating journalistic transparency

Manoush Zomorodi   Self-help as a publishing strategy

Joanne Lipman   Journalists inventing revenue streams

Mariana Moura Santos   Think local, act global

Amie Ferris-Rotman   More female reporters abroad (please)

Caitria O'Neill   The new court of public opinion

Tim Carmody   Watch out for Spotify

S. Mitra Kalita   The arc of news and audience

Steve Grove   The midterms are an opportunity

Heather Bryant   Building the ecosystems for collaboration

Kathleen McElroy   Building a news video experience native to mobile

Tanya Cordrey   Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention

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

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

Imaeyen Ibanga   Longform video leads the way

Joanne McNeil   Gatekeeping the gatekeepers

L. Gordon Crovitz   Serving readers over advertisers

Hossein Derakhshan   Television has won

Corey Johnson   The pro-fact resistance

Tamar Charney   We get serious about algorithms

Jacqui Cheng   Retailers move into content

Jared Newman   Venture funding and digital news don’t mix

Kelsey Proud   No, no, no

Sam Ford   The year of investing in processes

Sam Sanders   Shine the light on ourselves

Mariano Blejman   News games rule

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity

Lucas Graves   From algorithms to institutions

Debra Adams Simmons   And a woman shall lead them

Claire Wardle   Disinformation gets worse

Sally Lehrman   Trust comes first

Miguel Castro   The arrival of the impact producer

Evie Nagy   Pivot to mobile video frustration

Sue Schardt   Jump the niche

Rick Berke   Value is the watchword

Mira Lowe   The year of the local watchdog

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Seeking trust in fragmented spaces

Monika Bauerlein   The firehose of falsehood

Emily Goligoski   Looking beyond news for inspiration

Cory Haik   Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen   The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms

Jennifer Choi   Standing up for us and for each other

Marie Gilot   No assholes allowed

Tracie Powell   The muting of underserved voices

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

Rodney Gibbs   Tech workers turn to journalism

Federica Cherubini   The rise of bridge roles in news organizations

Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán   The editorial meeting of the future

Elizabeth Jensen   Show your work

Jim Brady   With the people, not just of the people

David Skok   Finding an information-life balance

Ariana Tobin   Too tired to tap

Vivian Schiller   Pivot to tomorrow

Mary Meehan   Real lives are at stake in rural areas

Corey Ford   The empire strikes back

Sarah Marshall   Loyalty as the key performance indicator

Nicholas Quah   Stop talking trash about young people

Nathalie Malinarich   Peak push

Burt Herman   Things get real

Yvonne Leow   The rise of video messaging

Kawandeep Virdee   Zines had it right all along

Umbreen Bhatti   The trust problem isn’t new

Mandy Velez   texting is lit rn, fam

Ray Soto   VR reaches the next level

Raney Aronson-Rath   Transparency is the antidote to fake news

Dannagal G. Young   Stop covering politics as a game

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

Monique Judge   Letting black women tell their own stories

Carlos Martínez de la Serna   The new journalism commons

Justin Kosslyn   The year journalists become digital security experts

Paul Ford   Go global

Jennifer Coogan   The future is female

Bill Keller   A growing turn to philanthropy

Jamie Mottram   From pageviews to t-shirts

Pablo Boczkowski   The rise of skeptical reading

Michael Kuntz   The only pivot that might work

Frédéric Filloux   External forces

Jassim Ahmad   Thriving on change

Mario García   Storytelling finally adapts to mobile

Usha Sahay   Wallets get opened

Richard J. Tofel   The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention

Zizi Papacharissi   Women come back

Will Sommer   The year local media gets conservative

Ståle Grut   Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks