2
0
1
9

Media wants to take care of you

“To inform readers means to also support readers’ care for themselves.”

Media wants your attention. You’re getting value too, but mostly it cares about the attention. We’re well informed, but there’s also all these other side effects. I have illustrated them here:

This is unhealthy. Readers are flattened into the need to be informed and entertained, ignoring the rest of the self. Media companies are finding fresh ways to create value by taking into account more of the reader’s needs. Recently there have been inspiring examples of media that wants to take care of you. This is something we really need in the world right now.

Girls Night In is a newsletter for women that arrives every Friday morning with self-care tips, making it feel okay to stay in and take care of yourself. #100DaysofAndNotOr by katie zhu is a series that explores “the seemingly opposing facets of life, relationships, and identity” and in many ways is immenself validating and illuminating of personal experiences.

Last year I wrote about zines, a format that is rich with material on care. A few highlights I’ve found over the year including Couldn’t Afford Therapy by Lawrence Lindell and A Guide to Writing Yourself by Victoria Emanuela and Caitlin Metz.

Anecdotally, it feels as if The New York Times’ Smarter Living has been appearing more frequently on the homepage. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case: It’s an important balance to everything we’re reading in the news. Look at this stunning animation.

To inform readers means to also support readers’ care for themselves. In 2019, we’ll have more:

Kawandeep Virdee works on product at Medium.

Steve Grove   A reckoning for tech’s work with news

Kristen Muller   Local news fails — in a good way

Zizi Papacharissi   Old interface, say hello to the new interface

Laura E. Davis   More access, but not that kind

Amy King   We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)

Talia Stroud   Engaging people across lines of difference

Nikki Usher   Three ways national media will further undermine trust

Mandy Velez   Putting the social back in social media

Sue Robinson   Reporters go on the offensive

Axie Navas   The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom

Becca Aaronson   From bridge roles to product thinkers

Ariel Zirulnick   Participation gets professional

Renée Kaplan   Our future could lie within our own organizations

Ernie Smith   The year we step back from the platform

Tshepo Tshabalala   Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers

Moreno Cruz Osório   Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil

Joel Konopo   Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa

Whitney Phillips   Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended

Catalina Albeanu   Being responsible for what we don’t know

Hearken   Pivot to people

Mike Isaac   The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing

Joe Amditis   Give the audience a seat at the table

Juleyka Lantigua   Podcasting battles East Coast bias

Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky   The year of the lawsuit

Mike Caulfield   Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work

Elva Ramirez   News — but make it cinematic

Jared Newman   AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race

Heather Bryant   We are responsible for how we use our power

Cory Bergman   Journalism as a technology service

Nisha Chittal   The homepage makes a comeback

Rasmus Kleis Nielsen   A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue

Eric Ulken   The year you actually start to like your CMS

Jonathan Stray   More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh

Logan Molyneux   Seeing social media for what it is

Rebecca Searles   From silos to Swiss Army knife teams

Brian Moritz   The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit

Jennifer Dargan   You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions

Michael Rain   The year of the culturally relevant curator

Ben Werdmuller   The platform tide is turning

Claire Wardle   Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces

Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie   The year product leads media

Millie Tran   There is no magic — you’ve got this

Adam Thomas   In Europe, foundations invest in news

Winny de Jong   Data journalism goes undercover

Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros   Entering a more balanced era

John Garrett   You can’t raise prices forever

Cherian George   Fake news wins in Asia

P. Kim Bui   The misfits become the bosses

Joanne McNeil   Building a digital hospice

Umbreen Bhatti   The story doesn’t end for the people we quote

A.J. Bauer   The coming splintering of conservative media

Seema Yasmin   We will create our own spaces

Dan Shanoff   Bet on sports gambling

Don Day   Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments

Tim Carmody   Unlocking the commons

Carrie Brown-Smith   Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime

Jonas Kaiser   Catching up with “Neuland”

Gideon Lichfield   Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you

Peter Cunliffe-Jones   The focus of misinformation debates shifts south

Tyler Fisher   This is journalism’s do-or-die moment

Adam Smith   Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news

Dave Burdick   Seeing our blind spots

Rishad Patel   A design system for responsible publishing

Shannon McGregor   More bogus embedded tweets in our stories

Steve Myers   From trying to cover it all to covering what matters

Rachel Glickhouse   Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs

Rachel Davis Mersey   Local news goes minimalist

Alexandra Borchardt   Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience

Jenée Desmond-Harris   It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white

Elite Truong   What do we owe the next generation?

Reyhan Harmanci   Selling more stories to Hollywood

Ben Smith   The pendulum starts to swing back

Jack Riley   Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits

Frank Chimero   Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist

Peter Bale   Venture capital runs out of patience

Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff   From news fatigue to news avoidance

Stephanie Edgerly   It’s time to understand the un-audience

J. Siguru Wahutu   Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019

Nathalie Malinarich   Video — yes, video

Cristi Hegranes   A year to invest in the security of local journalists

Chase Davis   We can acknowledge what we don’t know

Jean Friedman Rudovsky   Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities

Kyra Darnton   A shift to depth in video

Seth C. Lewis   The gap between journalism and research is too wide

Michael Grant   More newsrooms experiment their way to success

Nicholas Jackson   More transparency around newsroom decisions

Linda Solomon Wood   The year of the climate reporter

Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley   When a tech company pulls the plug on your story

Elizabeth Dunbar   Local reporters reflect on what’s not important

Simon Rogers   Data journalism becomes a global field

An Xiao Mina   The death of consensus, not the death of truth

Raney Aronson-Rath   We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”

Tamar Charney   Seriously: What do you do for people?

Rodney Gibbs   A bright — and young — year for audio

Francesco Zaffarano   Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media

Masuma Ahuja   Make foreign coverage less foreign

Matthew Pressman   The battle over objectivity intensifies

Emma Carew Grovum   The year of the loyal reader

Dheerja Kaur   A focus on problems, not platforms

Rick Berke   The year of loyalty

Bill Adair   Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods

Rebecca Lee Sanchez   We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater

Geetika Rudra   The year of actionable (local) journalism

Amy Schmitz Weiss   Local news isn’t where you thought it was

Bill Grueskin   Toward a symphony model for local news

Kainaz Amaria   We consider who’s behind the camera

Lauren Katz   Community becomes a core newsroom value

Zuzanna Ziomecka   News leadership gets an overdue upgrade

Marie Shanahan   Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms

Alberto Cairo   A year of uncertainty and confidence

Efrat Nechushtai   Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher

Sue Cross   Return of the water cooler

Johannes Klingebiel   We all grow hooves

Ståle Grut   A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism

Heather Chaplin   Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system

Meredith Artley   Huge demand for…anything but politics

Candis Callison   Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change

Soo Oh   Just showing our work isn’t enough

Stefanie Murray   Local news wakes up and starts collaborating

Ole Reißmann   The rise of vertical storytelling

Pablo Boczkowski   Reimagining the media for post-institutional times

Libby Bawcombe   Haikus of the news

Zainab Khan   Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win

Alyssa Zeisler   We expand what (and how and who) we serve

Annie Rudd   A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta

Adam B. Ellick   Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local

Kawandeep Virdee   Media wants to take care of you

Frank Mungeam   Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change

Julie Posetti   The year of the fight back

Mat Yurow   Content competition from the tech companies

Thomas Hanitzsch   The rise of tribal journalism

M. Scott Havens   Time to swing for the fences

Eric Nuzum   The year of the DIY podcast network

John Biewen   Podcasts keep getting better

Callie Schweitzer   The rise of the conveners

Mandy Jenkins   Fight the urge to run away from social media

Knight Foundation   A year of local collaboration

Josh Schwartz   A pullback from platforms and a focus on product

LaToya Drake   Listen up: New stories, new storytellers

Taylor Lorenz   Personal branding is more powerful than ever

Jeff Chin   We detox from Chartbeat

Angilee Shah   The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders

Andrew Donohue   Voting rights becomes the new climate change

Francesco Marconi   The year of iterative journalism

Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron   Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing

Hossein Derakhshan   The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not

Jeremy Gilbert   AI finally becomes helpful

Mario García   The rise of content “pilots”

Patrick Butler   Measuring impact will increase audience trust

Elizabeth Jensen   Going where the Acela can’t take you

Kevin D. Grant   A year to embrace journalism as public service

Kelsey Proud   Journalism becomes the escape

Charo Henríquez   Pivot to journalism

Darryl Holliday   Let’s talk about power (yours)

Errin Haines   Say it with me: Racism

Colleen Shalby   Representation becomes more than a talking point

Heba Aly   The rise of international nonprofit news

Nico Gendron   Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts

Kjerstin Thorson   Time to get mad about information inequality (again)

Carolina Guerrero   Spanish-language audio blows up

Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau   A more sincere definition of “community”

Greg Emerson   Power to the user

Matt Skibinski   Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers

Tushar Banerjee   Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising

Andrew Ramsammy   The great re-pivot to audio

John Saroff   The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences

Ernst-Jan Pfauth   Readers are only getting started

Andrea Faye Hart   Doing less harm, not just more good

Robin Kwong   Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”

Jim Friedlich   Meet Citizen Kane 2.0

Cindy Royal   For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption

Craig Newmark   The end of “loudspeakers for liars”

Julia Rubin   Meeting people where they are

Victor Pickard   We will finally confront systemic market failure

Matt Waite   “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”

Gabriel Snyder   Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel

Matt Karolian   Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers

Jonathan Gill   Publishers build a common tech platform together

Renan Borelli   Developing loyalty means developing your talent

Pia Frey   You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis

Monique Judge   Committing to the truth, calling out lies

Salem Solomon   Correcting our corrections

Manoush Zomorodi   Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness

Jake Shapiro   Podcasting is media’s slow food movement

Simon Galperin   After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession

Jesse Brown   Canada’s subsidy for news backfires

Joshua P. Darr   The nationalization of political news will accelerate

Kate Myers   Journalism continues to be bad for democracy

Celeste LeCompte   Local news needs local conversation to survive

Angèle Christin   Algorithms and the reflexive turn

Shalabh Upadhyay   A culture clash on India’s growing Internet

Justin Kosslyn   Text hits a tipping point

Elisabeth Goodridge   Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over

Sarah Stonbely   Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail

Steve Henn   Smart speakers get smarter

Jesse Holcomb   We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism

Alexandra Svokos   Good luck convincing us millennials to pay

Rubina Madan Fillion   Fighting the reality of deepfakes

Almar Latour   Reported facts, weaponized in service of action

Sarah Alvarez   Simplify and redistribute

Sarah Marshall   A return to destination journalism

Mariana Moura Santos   From pageviews to impact

Carl Bialik   Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news

Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer   The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”

Robert Hernandez   Racists and sexists get replaced