The 2018 elections in Brazil provided a preview of the scenario journalism can expect to face in 2019. Electoral campaigns, especially that of the president-elected Jair Bolsonaro, accelerated a disintermediation process characteristic of the social internet. The maxim that information has less need for traditional mediators to circulate was decisively evident, shaking the already weakened credibility of journalism.
Benefiting from a scenario of polarization, intolerance, and aggressiveness, the end-to-end connection principle established a reality often oblivious to facts. In this new ecosystem, political actors present the scenarios that interest them most. On the other end, the audience receives a narrative that best represents their way of thinking. All this bypasses journalism and its mediating role.
The communication strategies of the transitional government and its attitude towards the press don’t just demonstrate a further aggravation of this 2018 reality — they also indicate a trend that transcends political journalism.
In 2019, it will be the role of journalism to pay attention to this modus operandi. Exposing the entrails of social platforms will be crucial. But it will not be enough to once again convince society our work is important. To respond to disintermediation, journalism will need to deepen its relationship with audiences. This will mean not only to understand them better; it will be critical for us to see that the audience increasingly understands the contradictions of our practices. The answer to this mistrust will be to increase transparency and invest more in diversity and collaboration.
For the third time, Farol Jornalismo and the Associação Brasileira de Jornalismo Investigativo (Abraji, the Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalism) invited journalists and researchers to forecast journalism in the upcoming year. Challenged to think about 2019 with the dust of the election season still unsettled, the authors of a special issue of O jornalismo no Brasil outlined a framework that considers the complex scenario 2018 leaves us. The horizon is one of great challenges, but also great opportunities. To take advantage of them, however, waking up is key.
Perhaps the greatest example of the dichotomy between challenges and opportunities lies in what we understand as credibility. The journalist and researcher Sílvia Lisboa argues it’s not enough for a journalistic vehicle to claim to be credible — credibility built in one way only is nothing but a marketing strategy; it needs to be demonstrated in such a way that it can be perceived by the audience.
One possibility to ensure this perception, according to Lisboa, is for the vehicle to be more transparent about their funding and their attitude towards the facts. Another one is for journalism to “get out of the trap of being a mere reflection of the cultural wars that spring up in the underground of the internet and seek to set an agenda that reconciles with the pillars of modern ideals,” according to the journalist and researcher Rosane Borges.
Transparency also permeates the reflection of the journalist and editor of Projeto Comprova, Sérgio Lüdtke, on misinformation. Facing an ecosystem marked by bubbles that get thicker and thicker, in order to contain misinformation, it’s imperative that current fact-checking efforts are maintained. But it will not be enough for journalists to keep exposing the problem. It will be necessary to convince people that the journalistic narrative seeks the common good. For this, journalism needs a “new contract of trust with society.”
This new contract involves a greater effort to get to know the public. In the case of fact-checking, the Filtro Fact-Checking journalist and researcher Taís Seibt suggests the adoption of formats that better converse with the environments where Brazilians usually get information. She believes that video or audio checks may be more likely to succeed on WhatsApp, for example.
In relation to the journalism performed away from the urban cores, the researcher Claudia Nonato pointed out the challenge of understanding the concerns of the part of the population that voted for Jair Bolsonaro. Being almost always of a progressive bias, journalistic initiatives that seek to give visibility to lower classes will need to adapt their strategies to approach and support these people, although without leaving aside the ethical standards that regulate the profession.
Diversity strategies will also be important for journalism in 2019. Researcher Gean Gonçalves indicates the possibility of Brazilian newsrooms adopting gender editors, as El País and The New York Times did this year. It’s also up to journalism, Gonçalves points out, to be aware of the pressure that groups of women and LGBT people may apply when facing the policies of the new government, as well as to “monitor and report on violations that may get worse and affect those communities more harmfully.”
Surveilling Bolsonaro’s steps will also guide the efforts of journalism in the Amazon forest. Journalist Elaíze Farias draws attention to the difficulties of acting independently in that strategic region, far from the economic and political center of the country. To fight the subservience that rules devastation, coverage will need to embrace the complexity of the Amazon, leaving aside stereotypes and buzzwords.
The challenge to be faced by journalism in the Amazon is not only narrative but also economic. The lack of resources doesn’t strangle journalism only in the north; across the entire country, local journalism suffers from broken business models that render innovation impossible, according to Sérgio Spagnuolo, editor of the Volt Data Lab and coordinator of the Atlas da Notícia project. The distance from the journalism produced in large cities increases, and so does disintermediation. Without news organizations capable of covering small- and medium-sized cities, their populations are left at the mercy of misinformation.
One of the solutions, in terms of business, may be what Patrícia Gomes, product director at JOTA, calls “journalytics.” Looking closely at the data generated by the users may be a way of getting to know them better. Adapting journalistic products to the behavior of those who consume them will help reestablish a relationship of trust between journalism and its public.
In 2019, Brazilian journalism will need to rediscover its public. And in finding them again, it will need to disarm itself. “The credibility crisis that the press lives today must more and more contribute to journalists getting out of their fort and asking their readers what it is that makes them not trust what they read in the professional press,” writes Guilherme Amado, reporter of Globo and Época.
The assurance of journalism’s role as a relevant social mediator will depend on this reunion. Because in order to win the War on Truth, The Guardians — Time’s 2018 Person of the Year — will need the public by their side.
Moreno Cruz Osório is cofounder of Farol Jornalismo.
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)