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