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