A core component of the journalistic enterprise is helping people understand what they cannot directly experience: decision-making in Congress, fighting a war overseas, discovering the outer bounds of the solar system, you name it. Reading about NASA’s Mars InSight lander isn’t the only way to feel like you’re on another planet, though. The polarization that characterizes our society can make those on the other side of an issue seem just as distant.
I think journalism is helping to change this.
In the year to come, I see journalists actively engaging societal divides as a trend poised to take off, whether it’s rural/urban differences, political divisiveness, or any of the multitude of other cleavages facing society. Journalism has an opportunity to provide an incredible service. I think we should be asking: How can journalism help us understand those who voted differently? Those who practice a different religion? Those who live just 30 minutes away?
In some ways these are old questions, but the new ways in which journalists are pursing this work are what’s truly noteworthy. KUOW, for example, hosted speed-dating-style forums for interested participants to meet people who they might not otherwise (e.g., “Ask a Muslim”). Spaceship Media and their collaborators set up Facebook groups allowing those with diverse views on topics like guns and immigration to interact. In our review of these efforts, we identified 25 stellar examples of newsrooms doing exactly this work. And I think that we’ve only scratched the surface of what journalism could do.
As news organizations look for ways to build community trust, engaging people across lines of difference strikes me as a promising approach. There will be holdouts, to be sure. Engagement efforts take resources and they do not have the reach of traditional journalism. But, they can pay dividends and their effects can be extended through coverage.
As 2019 undoubtedly brings new types of misinformation, attempts to further polarize the public, and new economic challenges, I see newsrooms as helping to light bridges across divides.
Talia Stroud is director of the Center for Media Engagement and associate professor of communication studies and journalism at the University of Texas.
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way