Everyone in the news business has firsthand experience of how commercial pressures have forced change. Yet few organizations have developed the capacity to constantly learn, adapt, and thrive on it.
2018 will be the year when the smartest digital publishers will reorient themselves for volatility. How adaptive is your organization?
Tactics come and go, but leadership must set an unequivocal mission that inspires, addresses everyone, and remains constant. Is it clear who and what your organization stands for? Are activities between teams connected and pointed in the same direction?
In the search for answers, there’s a tendency to look up to management, or even outside. But great insights are often just across the room. The age of automatic deference in the workplace is over. Are individuals able to speak up and be heard? Do managers and colleagues alike reach deep into teams to collect ideas and exploit expertise? Has a culture of experimentation permeated everywhere?
To address an opportunity or issue, you first have to see it. This requires making sure information gets in front of people who can act upon it. Analytics and audience data are now commonplace but can give the false impression of paying attention. What are you doing to truly learn about readers? Are you asking questions to serve them or sell them?
Deliberate differentiation means having the stomach to stand apart and resist dogma. Today’s best practice may turn out to be bad practice or irrelevant to your strategy. When you gravitate towards opportunities, do you stay grounded in your mission? To what extent is your success dependent on someone else?
Required skills and knowledge are changing faster than job descriptions. How fast are you adapting roles and providing the necessary development opportunities to keep staff up to speed? Does every discipline have a path for career progression and possibility of lateral moves?
Everyone wishes for resources they do not have, but strong organizations know how to make difficult decisions. How good are you at establishing priorities and avoiding distractions? Are decisions made quickly and decisively?
Changing course is painful because it brings loss and disorientation. Yet giving something up also means freeing resources to try something else in service of the same mission. Indeed, if you push through difficult change, your reward is a competitive differentiator. How long do you hold on to something that is not working? When changing course, is the rationale clear?
Turbulence is here to stay. The difference between those that ready for change and those that suffer it will be decisive in 2018.
Jassim Ahmad is global head of multimedia innovation for Reuters.
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
An Xiao Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons