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