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