This might be more hope than prediction, but 2018 will be the year journalists stop waiting for someone else to save journalism.
Despite the recent success of The Washington Post and The New York Times, the news business remains in financial free fall — particularly at the local and regional level. And this at a time of relative economic prosperity, which is all the more worrying.
I don’t have to remind anyone here what the death of local news could mean for democracy. But for journalists, this crisis is existential. Marketing managers and sales executives can always find something else to sell or market. When the local paper in a one-paper town is gone without anything to take its place…well, that’s a future we simply can’t allow to happen.
I don’t know a single journalist who got into the business to spend time learning about ad models, paywalls, funnels, and the like. But that’s exactly what has to happen, and soon.
After all, journalists are the reason people pay for news in the first place. We are the product. The problem is, we’re still producing a 19th-century product and selling to a 21st-century audience, with predictable results. That has to change, and journalists need to be the ones driving that change.
I am seeing some small, but significant, steps in this direction: Two journalists, Natalie Hanman and Amanda Michel, grew The Guardian’s membership program from a few thousand to nearly 800,000 paying supporters in a year. The New York Times will soon be led by journalist A.G. Sulzberger, who, from the 2014 Innovation Report on, has brought much more of a business focus to the newsroom.
The Washington Post recently appointed a product editor as a way to bring the newsroom and business side closer together. Product management is a subject now taught in journalism schools and discussed at just about every conference I’ve attended at over the past 12 months.
All of this is good, just not nearly enough. Leaving the business of news to the business side is a luxury newsrooms can’t afford much longer.
Aron Pilhofer is the James B. Steele Chair in Journalism Innovation at Temple University.
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Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
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Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
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Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
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Frédéric Filloux External forces
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
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Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
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Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
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Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
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Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
L. Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Lam Thuy Vo Breaking free from the tyranny of the loudest
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Borja Echevarría TV goes digital, digital goes TV
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Alice Antheaume Are you fluent in AI?
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
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Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Richard J. Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
Jennifer Choi Standing up for us and for each other
Vanessa K. DeLuca Women’s voices take center stage
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Dheerja Kaur Fun with subscription products
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
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Jennifer Coogan The future is female
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Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
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Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Susie Banikarim R.I.P. Pivot to Video (2017–2017)
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Francesco Marconi The year of machine-to-machine journalism
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Umbreen Bhatti The trust problem isn’t new
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Errin Haines At the ballot, it’s time to count black women
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Claire Wardle Disinformation gets worse
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Nicholas Diakopoulos Fortifying social media from automated inauthenticity
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Raney Aronson-Rath Transparency is the antidote to fake news
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer Skepticism and narcissism
Mariano Blejman News games rule
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
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