Earlier this year, I talked with some people about setting up a new publication. We had a specific focus, a budget, and a great list of potential collaborators. What we didn’t have is a shared vision for what would be the end of the publication. How would we know that it is time to throw in the towel? And then what? It wasn’t so much that my cohort and I disagreed about what to do at the end, but that we had no answers for these questions. It was reason enough to table the discussion.
We talked about the many online publications that we’ve admired over the years; many of which had a nice run and now…are not running. All the work the editors and writers put into those publications now feels stranded and buried rather than properly contextualized and reflected on. What’s eerie is when deceased online media gives readers the impression of uncertainty. There is a semi-atemporality to web interfaces, which means that even a publication that hasn’t been updated in years might look like it’s still active. That irresolute state communicates to future readers that no one cared to treat it well in its final days. Perhaps no cared about it ever.
Our conversation focused on independent publications, but the questions extend to the rollercoaster that is VC-backing and other chancy methods of funding online media, which can end abruptly or zombify into content farms or hot-take flytraps. Does anyone have any illusions about the life cycle of media anymore? In 2019 and on, it will be time to face that fact that every website, magazine, podcast, blog, and newsletter — like people — will die, and we must prepare for this event to happen with dignity or it will not.
If you are afraid to have this conversation while your media product is thriving, surely it can’t end well.
A palliative or hospice approach to ending a publication will vary product to product, but the core value is communicating the archive to future readers (“This space isn’t happening anymore, but here is what it was and why it was…”). It’s a content strategy approach that should run parallel with the technical questions of archiving material after a publication has closed. The first steps would be to reorganize the content (a dead website has different front page priorities) and write an editor’s note to eulogize. Tavi Gevinson’s widely read closing letter at Rookie is an excellent example, as well as agenda-setting.
But Medium’s The Message, a publication where I was a founding contributor, is an example of what not to do. It was once an entire vertical with op-eds and essays about technology, an editorial through-line that was still unusual in 2014. A few other aspects were unique to it, including, for better or for worse, a “collaborative editing” workflow; but some really terrific writing was published there and I was proud to be part of it. Much of the information in the archives would be of interest to someone studying the rise of social media and internet in society, but no one looking at The Message today could easily discern what it was, or why it’s no longer in operation. Part of the problem was its scattered and unsatisfactory closing strategy. Reorganized under new leadership in its final months, there was no complete finish (with a note like Gevinson’s that could contextualize it for future readers). Instead, an entirely new publication was formed, using the same name but a different staff. That publication fizzled out, leaving not just one but two publications in an incoherent zombie state. It doesn’t take much time or effort to write a note or organize content for future readers. What it requires is care. The Message communicates to future readers that no one cared about it. But that’s not true.
I’m unsure whether we will move forward with the proposed publication, but our conversation about its inevitable end was useful and healthy. And I know that we aren’t the only ones thinking about the end of a publication in tandem with the beginning. I optimistically believe that incoherent dead husks left after a beloved publication ends, will be rarer next year and onwards.
Joanne McNeil’s first book, Lurking, will be released in 2019.
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
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
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
james Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
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
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Joshua Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced