I’m not sure if this is wishful thinking, a prescription or a prediction. But I hope and expect that 2019 will be the year that national news outlets, those with their East Coast/Beltway view of the world, start to get a handle on alternative ways of covering the rest of the country.
I don’t mean breaking news — newsrooms have hurricane and fire and tragedy down pat, for the most part. But a year from now, the U.S. media will be headed into full-on presidential election mode and we still haven’t seen widespread experimentation with new models for how best to report on the perspectives of those who don’t live in the national media’s largely coastal urban bubble.
The 2016 election coverage overall was problematic for many reasons. One was that even many people who paid close attention to the reporting came away feeling blindsided. Deep currents of political disaffection were welling up. The old models that newsrooms used for teasing those out didn’t work. Standard vox pops at the diner just don’t cut it anymore.
Many newsrooms are discussing this as they begin to put in place their election 2020 strategies. 1A, the NPR-distributed daily talk show that originates at WAMU in Washington, D.C., has a two-year plan to work with public radio stations in six states to broaden the national conversation. Public radio’s long-discussed goal to put in place much more robust local-national collaboration is finally coming together and could offer a model for coverage that feels like it’s coming from the ground up.
We need all this and more, as newsrooms embrace ways to go deeper into communities. More voices from the middle need to be amplified, because we already know what the extremes are. I have high hopes that this will be the year that newsrooms put serious thought into identifying the new models for this reporting.
Elizabeth Jensen is ombudsman and public editor of NPR.
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Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
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Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
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Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
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Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
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Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
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Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
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Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
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Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
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Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
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Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
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