In the coming year, we’ll see continuing tension between the public and the press over what’s “real” and what’s not. With the president calling journalists in the mainstream media “a stain on America,” it’s safe to say that the “fake news” conversation will persist — and that attacks on the press will, too. It all means that news organizations will have to keep fighting for the trust of a skeptical public, coming up with ways to demonstrate our credibility across all of the platforms on which we publish our journalism.
At Frontline, we believe that one such way is through journalistic transparency. It’s something we’ve long practiced — but now more than ever, we’ve been cracking open our reporting process and offering new, self-directed opportunities to explore, search, and share what goes into building our journalism. As part of our broader Transparency Project initiative, this fall we launched The Putin Files — which made available 56 full-length interviews from the making of Michael Kirk and his team’s documentary, Putin’s Revenge. We published 32 interviews in video alongside transcripts, and 24 interviews in transcript form only — all fully navigable by person, theme, or highlight.
Our goal was not only to make our source material accessible to audiences, but to make it useful. We developed interactive tools that enable readers and viewers to explore annotated transcripts, compare versions of events, and share quotes via social media.
Poynter’s Jim Warren called this endeavor “an admirable move towards transparency.” And while a video and transcript effort like this is unique, there are different efforts at transparency underway at other news organizations — and we hope more will flourish in the year to come. I’m on a new Knight Commission that’s charged with developing ways to deepen public trust in the press and other democratic institutions. Thinking seriously about transparency will be an important part of the equation.
It’s important to note, though, that the burden (and opportunity) of trust-building doesn’t just fall on news organizations, but also on the platforms where people consume our stories. As Emily Bell said earlier this year, “Fake news has become a meaningless and rather dangerous phrase. But the problem of feeling unsure of what to believe and what not to believe, the obliteration of credible brands and the squeezing of all types of content into the same un-delineated window, is very real.” We’ve seen Facebook make moves towards differentiating between verified and unverified stories. Twitter and Google, too. But the problem is massive, and these are just first steps. I hope that in the year to come, media outlets and tech platforms alike will take bigger ones.
Raney Aronson-Rath is executive producer of the PBS investigative documentary series Frontline.
Jamie Mottram From pageviews to t-shirts
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Alexios Mantzarlis Moving fake news research out of the lab
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Imaeyen Ibanga Longform video leads the way
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Nikki Usher The year of The Washington Post
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Raju Narisetti Mirror, mirror on the wall
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Sydette Harry Listen to your corner and watch for the hook
Mi-Ai Parrish Blockchain and trust
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Hossein Derakhshan Television has won
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Eric Nuzum Beyond the narrative arc
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Nicholas Quah Stop talking trash about young people
Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
An Xiao Mina Memes and visuals come to the fore
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work