As legacy and new digital publishers in the wider world seek to wean their business models from an overreliance on advertising, social platforms, and costly video, the turn is toward developing direct revenue from audiences — subscriptions, paywalls, crowdfunding, memberships, and Rorschach-like blockchain experiments.
It’s pleasantly ironic that some of the internet’s oldest open protocols are shining through, with email newsletters and podcasting standing tall after the fallout of the Lumascape’s decade of hyper-intermediation.
Against a backdrop of media malaise, podcasting offers hope for a healthy ecosystem that treats listeners with respect, gives publishers a direct relationship with audiences, and gives voice to new talent and communities long missing from the airwaves. Podcasting is the slow food movement of the media world.
Podcasting’s “bugs” — difficult to scan, share, comment on — are actually its features. With Facebook and YouTube’s ceaseless sneezing, publishers are very much in need of podcasting’s antiviral cure.
In 2019 podcasting will enter year five of its renaissance, still expanding from the big bang of 2014 (the year that launched Serial, Gimlet, Radiotopia, Panoply, and Apple’s first standalone podcast app). The stakes have gotten higher, the big players have taken notice, and the influx of publishers of all shapes and sizes puts pressure on a podcast economy that still lags in terms of monetization and marketing muscle.
In 2019 we’ll see bolder attempts to carve up the still-baking podcast pie into more profitable paywalled pieces, but I predict unsatisfying results until Apple decides to make its own. The fact is that most people still don’t get podcasting, never mind pay for it, so let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
However, a pivot to podcasting gives publishers something existentially powerful: a channel they own and control, literally giving voice to their brands, stories, and the journalists behind the bylines. Podcasting may not yet be a moneymaker for many, but it’s a meaning-maker for most. In an overabundant media world, trust is the scarce resource. So when your strategy calls for deepening engagement, forging relationships that are not easily swiped away, podcasting is a sound investment.
Jake Shapiro is cofounder and CEO of RadioPublic.
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Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
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Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
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Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
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Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
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Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
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Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
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Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
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Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Juleyka Lantigua-Williams Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
james Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
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Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
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Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
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Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
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Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
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Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
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Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Joshua Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator