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