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