2019 will see continued, if not increased interest in understanding the local journalism landscape from a bird’s-eye view. Though a relatively new subfield, news ecosystem mapping projects have proliferated, and will continue to do so, as they also become more sophisticated in their methodology and presentation.
The major disruptions to journalism have affected newsrooms at all geographic levels — local, national, and international. And while national newsrooms have largely recovered their footing, the new local journalism business model has taken longer to emerge. Couple that with renewed concern, after the 2016 presidential election, that local news deficits are having more direct impacts on democracy than perhaps was earlier thought, and the urgent need for a comprehensive accounting of the local journalism landscape becomes clear.
The disruption of journalism’s business model, along with the extraordinary political communication environment, have created a deep craving on the part of practitioners, audiences, funders, and academics to understand the journalism landscape from 30,000 feet. But in addition to seeing from 30,000 feet, we also need to be able to zoom in and know a landscape as it exists from the vantage of those who live there — understanding what kind of content is being produced, and how news flows.
News ecosystem mapping is an effort to understand who provides news and how it flows through a community (geographic or otherwise). When not geographically focused, ecosystem mapping looks at a topic, like the evolution of the Trayvon Martin story, or at the influence of partisan media, as in a postmortem of US presidential election coverage. But most ecosystem studies take a geographic focus, usually because we want to understand not only who the news and information providers are, but also where they are missing.
New digital tools are being brought to bear on this problem as those who study journalism team up with data scientists (or become data scientists themselves). With evermore sophisticated methods it will be possible to tackle classic research problems such as depth versus scale, and large-scale content analysis. Results will be able to be presented on user-friendly websites that enable audiences to quickly find local news producers near them, or funders to easily identify news deserts in need of watering.
The need for a scaled but detailed understanding of the local journalism landscape will fuel continued interest in news ecosystem mapping projects going forward, and the eventual fulfillment of this need will bring us that much closer to solving the contemporary journalism crisis.
Sarah Stonbely is the research director at the Center for Cooperative Media.
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence