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