We are allegedly far beyond the era of the absolute Chinese wall between editorial and business, that time when it was unheard of for the newsroom to speak of collaborations with what was generically known as “the business side” (or “commercial” for the British media). There was a firm barrier between the money and the output — rightfully protecting the journalism from any external commercial pressures. But it was also part of the culture and even a point of pride. Us and them. That cultural barrier has actually persisted in many news organizations. Often journalists can’t actually identify colleagues in marketing, advertising, business development, strategy, analytics, customer service, or even product, or have much sense of what they actually do. (Communications is different — those people can get you exposure!)
But next year, I predict, this cultural difference will really (finally) start to abate. Protection of the autonomy and impartiality of news has never been more central, and it is more than ever a foundation of quality journalism in all of our newsrooms. But what is dissolving — and will continue to dissolve at an accelerating pace next year — is the impermeable border between the seemingly foreign regions of a news organization.
As more and more publishers shift toward subscription and membership, the word “revenue” is making its way — and will increasingly be welcomed — into morning news conferences and planning meetings.
Journalists — traditional reporters and editors, not just the hybrids working in the “growth,” “digital,” and “engagement” spaces — are beginning to get acquainted with the concept of product development and what a product manager does, learning how to develop concepts collaboratively and with defined outcomes in mind (great journalism andrevenue). Journalists are beginning to actively seek out audience insights from data analysts and customer research people that can help them get better at doing the thing they always thought they were doing: targeting readers interested in their journalism. (Andwho might also pay for it.)
Editors and reporters are getting acquainted with marketing strategies and the powers of alignment, and coming awake to the merits of all these other levers of impact and engagement that they never knew they could access (through that colleague they always see in the elevator but never knew what she did). Now they know these colleagues can help them reach the readers most likely to get value out of their work. (Andhelp monetize it.)
There is already a growing exchange between editorial and all the other parts of the organization. Fruitful and respectful collaborations that start with the realization that we all share the same objectives — or, at least, are able to agree to shared objectives that we can define together. It’s no coincidence that just as newsrooms are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of protecting high-quality, trustworthy journalism, so they are becoming open to new conversations about its viability — and the role that editorial can play in building that. And reaching out to experts in their own organizations who can help them.
We talk a lot about trust in news, and less about our own trust in our own news organizations. I predict — and I certainly hope — that 2019 will be the year when trust and collaboration within and across our own organizations becomes the obvious way forward.
Renée Kaplan is head of audience engagement at the Financial Times.
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
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Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
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Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
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John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
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Greg Emerson Power to the user
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
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Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
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Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
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M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
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Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point