Late this year, we saw strong evidence that consumers quickly and willingly substitute news apps for Facebook in the case that Facebook is unavailable (and similar evidence for other platforms). That makes for an opportunity as publishers’ relationship with the platforms evolves.
With Facebook traffic on the decline, a steady stream of bad news about the effects of social media on society, and no major new platform emerging for engaging with news readers, publishers will need to work hard to own their audiences rather than building audience on distributed platforms.
From those publishers who succeed, I suspect we’ll see an enhanced focus on two things:
Josh Schwartz is chief of product, engineering, and data science at Chartbeat.
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Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
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Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
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Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
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Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
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Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
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Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
james Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Joshua Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing