Face to face. In 2019, audiences will define the sorts of relationships they want with their media, and they’ll increasingly demand real-world interactions.
Relationships won’t be vertical, but horizontal. Outlets that want to be successful will recognize this and continue offering their audiences online spaces, like private Slack, Facebook and WhatsApp groups to connect 1:1 with content creators. But these relationships won’t be (and shouldn’t be) limited to online interactions: in 2019, we’ll see a growing desire for IRL conversations that build stronger relationships between audiences and producers. I hope outlets and content creators will use these opportunities to have significant dialogues with audiences, and help readers and listeners understand how news is reported and why stories matter.
In early 2019 at Radio Ambulante we’ll be launching los Clubes de Escucha (listening clubs), in-person gatherings for people to listen together, talk about the stories we’ve produced, and build community around our content. Live events will be of increasing importance, not just for brand-building, but as opportunities to connect deeply with audiences we increasingly depend on.
Funders and grantmakers will support daring journalism entrepreneurs with an eye toward sustainability. Funders will recognize the need to support not only content creation, but also the creation of the business, legal and economic structures that make journalism sustainable. In other words, media funders in 2019 will understand that supporting journalism also means supporting forward-thinking journalism entrepreneurs from an early stage.
Spanish-language audio content will blow up in 2019, reaching not only Latin American audiences, but U.S.-based Latino listeners. There’s a huge opportunity coming for Spanish-language audio producers. The Latin American podcast market is showing real signs of life, with an exciting wave of producers, new shows, and growing audiences. In some ways, digital audio was made for the Spanish-language audience: With more than 400 million Spanish speakers from more than 20 countries, there is great potential to aggregate huge audiences with niche offerings. As dynamic, geo-located ads become the industry standard, the possibility of monetizing shows with large audiences spread across a dozen countries will become all the more enticing.
Carolina Guerrero is CEO and co-founder of Radio Ambulante.
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
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
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime