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