I hope 2019 won’t be the year that fact-checkers give up from exhaustion.
They are understandably tired. Despite fact-checking Donald Trump for nearly a decade (the first PolitiFact check of his birther claims was published in 2011), his extraordinary run of whoppers and Pants on Fires and four-Pinocchio claims shows no signs of slowing.
He’s like an indestructible monster in a Godzilla movie. The authorities keep firing at him, but he just keeps walking through town, gaining power.
The fact-checkers have tried every weapon they’ve got: Lie of the Year, Whoppers of the Year and even running lists of thousands of his falsehoods. They’ve created new ones, like The Washington Post Fact Checker’s new Bottomless Pinocchio, which is reserved for false claims that have been repeated more than 20 times. Fittingly, only one politician qualifies: Trump.
(Also quite fitting: The Bottomless Pinocchio was introduced on the front page of The Washington Post’s print edition next to a story about Russian propaganda.)
But despite the new weapons, Trump storms on, leaving the truth in tatters.
Looking ahead to 2019, fact-checkers shouldn’t be deterred by his persistence nor by his bogus claims of “fake news.” They should continue to check everything he says and look for more ways to innovate. News organizations should consider:
Bill Adair is Knight Professor of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University.
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Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
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Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
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Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
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Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
james Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Joshua Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
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