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.
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Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
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Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
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Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
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Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
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Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
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Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
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Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
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Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
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Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
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Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
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Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
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Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
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Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
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Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler