As we close out 2018, the idea of letting audience questions drive reporting has become mainstream. (There are even awards for it now!) From legacy metros to one-year-old startups, many of us are in agreement that it’s a no-brainer way to establish trust and create journalism that audience members will actually find useful, even if not all news organizations are doing it yet.
In 2019, we’ll see the industry invite audience members to make journalism with us.
Early successes will prompt journalists to start seeing audience involvement less as a liability to be managed and more as an asset to expand their scope and impact. And we’ll see a whole slew of new newsroom roles and re-imagined current ones emerge to support that work.
The boom in membership for news is one of the things driving this shift (interest in solutions, movement, and engaged journalism are others). Organizations know they need to offer members — who are buying into a mission, not purchasing a product — meaningful relationships.
That’s pushing them to be more creative about the ways they involve non-journalists — inviting them to help them comb complex databases, track disinformation and hate speech, and make improvements to their website. (At the Membership Puzzle Project, we’ve already seen more than a dozen proposals like this in applications for the Membership in News Fund.)
Movements like “citizen science” show experts finding ways to leverage passionate laypeople to expand their impact. I think journalists will similarly step back from the idea that only they can make journalism.
Earlier this year, journalism entrepreneur Philip Smith asked what would happen to the local media landscape as legacy news organizations “faltered” and lean digital startups stepped in to fill the void. What would a network of “small is beautiful” news organizations sufficient to fill the widening gap in coverage look like?
One of the concerns you hear most often is about the size of those startups. (We heard this at The New Tropic, where I was the director until November.) With only a handful of reporters, can they really fill the void?
On their own, probably not. (And many aren’t trying to, anyway.) But if they figure out how to leverage their audience’s expertise and enthusiasm — something they’re primed to do because they’re often nailing the audience engagement element of it already — they will bring “wants but can’ts” — like event series, ambitious investigative projects, and searchable databases of municipal data — within their reach.
What does leveraging that expertise and enthusiasm look like? At the Spanish fact-checking platform Maldita, they recently surveyed their several thousand “Malditos.” One of the questions they asked was, “What’s your superpower?”
“Maybe you are a great designer who can convince us to finally stop using Paint, or maybe you’re a handyman and you think it’s time that our office has a door and you are willing to help us build it.”
With that ask, Maldita stretched the concept of how someone can contribute to their work. (Also, if you happen to be a handyman in Madrid, they really do need a door.) Their next step will be adding respondents and their “superpowers” to a database that they can tap at any time.
Another creative approach comes from Newslaundry, a sassy digital news site in India. It has a handful of its superfans managing the daily maintenance of its website, which is written in a coding language that no one currently on their tech team knows well. Handing the keys to your website over to volunteers requires some serious trust.
There’s an endless list of “jobs to be done” in a news organization that audience members can be trained to do — or might already do better than journalists. To name a few:
See our project’s examples of current collaborations and jobs you might task your own super fans with.
There’s one caveat to giving “jobs to be done” to audience members, though — they’re not signing on to be your labor. They’re signing on to share their passion with you. Treat their involvement accordingly.
Managing an informal network of participants is totally different than managing a team of reporters. Being a really good interviewer doesn’t necessarily translate into the ability to command a room.
News organizations like The Bureau Local and The Bristol Cable in the U.K. have community managers, often non-journalists with backgrounds in community organizing. They bring skills that traditional journalists often don’t have, like the ability to excite and motivate large numbers of strangers toward a common goal and to connect across lines of difference in their community.
But for these audience involvement efforts to succeed, they need more than those soft skills. They need cash, organization, and newsroom-wide support — and a point person sitting at the nexus of editorial, revenue, and engagement.
Newsrooms will need to professionalize the practice of audience participation, and in 2019, we’ll see the emergence of new newsroom roles to that reflect that.
Ariel Zirulnick leads the Membership in News Fund for the Membership Puzzle Project.
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
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
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate