As humans we are drawn to stories. This year we were introduced to complex stories rich in character and subject matter diversity on one of the most adored and fastest-growing formats: podcasts. Arguably two of the year’s standouts (season three of Serial and season two of In the Dark) are in a league of their own because they interrogate the lived experience of underrepresented people and communities.
2019 is the year when we will see equally resourced, meticulously researched and well-produced podcasts from minority storytellers who will offer deep reportage about their own communities.
The need for stories from diverse voices is particularly important on platforms where audiences are growing. What this requires is a toolkit some untapped voices find as an insurmountable barrier to entry: Money, expertise, training and mentorship. While monthly podcast listenership continues to grow year-over-year, not all groups are part of the upward trend. An AudioBoom and YouGov study found that 60 percent of minority Americans are not listening to podcasts. More research is needed to reveal the underlying cause of the dearth of minority listeners, but when people don’t see themselves or their communities reflected, it is easy to disengage.
Spotify’s Soundup Bootcamps for Women of Color have provided resources for women of color, and Google and PRX are taking a step to support marginalized groups via its Podcasts Creator program. Communities who are underrepresented in the podcast landscape — particularly from the creator lens — have a voice and stories to tell. 2019 is the year we make sure those voices are heard.
LaToya Drake is a founding member of the News Lab at Google.
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters