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