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