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