“Nobody has any attention span anymore. Least of all anyone under 40.” Until a few years ago, it seemed that virtually all media watchers, and media makers, agreed on this. Among the most powerful gatekeepers, anyway, the consensus seemed solid.
One of the most gratifying revelations to emerge from the podcast boom of the last few years is that the above article of faith was dead wrong. It’s an especially gratifying discovery if, like me, you love to produce long-form, in-depth, documentary audio.
Yes, the trend took off with Serial’s first season. Twelve episodes, “one story told week by week,” 100 million downloads in no time, etc., etc. Everyone knows that Serial’s success unleashed a new podcast stampede. More specifically, for my purposes here, it threw open the doors to the podcast series. Eight, ten, fourteen parts, a bunch of hours in total — the audio nonfiction (and sometimes fiction) equivalent of a good book, or of the bingeable Netflix series so many of us are burning through. Podcast listeners — who in fact skew younger than in most other media — seem to be saying: Yes, thank you. Take me on a journey. We’re going to take our time, dig into corners, get into the weeds? Sign me up.
So, we’ve got the many true crime series, each show or season tackling a single case (In the Dark, Dirty John, Empire on Blood, Atlanta Monster, Last Seen), while others dive into past political scandals (Slow Burn, Bag Man). In addition, podcasters are making series that explore personal journeys (First Day Back, How to Be a Girl) and historical and social themes (UnCivil, Caught, Scene on Radio’s Seeing White and MEN). There’s fiction and quasi-fiction (Homecoming, The Shadows), and limited series turning on a creative, imaginative device (Everything is Alive).
It turns out that people — well, lots of people, anyway — are hungry for substance. Our attention spans are quite intact, ready, and willing.
My prediction: More podcast series in 2019. (No kidding.) They’ll keep getting better, smarter, deeper, and more varied. Thank god and the inventors of the podcast. Bring ‘em on.
John Biewen is audio program director at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and host/producer of Scene on Radio.
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success