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