2019 will be the year we look to more unusual places outside of journalism for inspiration and collaboration.
We’ve learned from software development practices as we transform from newspapers, radio, and TV stations into digital media companies. This has brought audience analytics, project management, and A/B testing into newsrooms.
But as even the biggest tech companies are starting to discover, there are larger issues than just how to reach, monetize, and retain users. How do we convene civic spaces, or ones that further human connection? What motivates learning and curiosity, to ward against disinformation? How do we study and change our own organizational cultures?
These are questions for journalism that technology does not have the answers for. So we must look to adjacent fields: game design, ethnography, theater development, and others. These disciplines have relevant research, tools, and crucially, people who want to help journalism survive and thrive.
Here are some paths to explore in 2019:
What can we learn from public arts about how to connect, represent, and convene communities? How do we move beyond journalism that “targets” and “reaches out to” pre-existing communities, to journalism that builds communities?
Public arts organisations have long grappled with similar questions. For example, Claire Doherty came up with “The New Rules of Public Art” to challenge how public art is commissioned and created.
What can we learn from game designers about how people become curious and interested, learn, and remain in flow? For example, by drawing from the insights Celia Hodent used in teaching more than 200 million people how to play Fortnite through designing the in-game tutorial.
What can we learn about the digital transformation of newsrooms from policy researchers studying how practices are formed and can be changed?
AnneMarie Dorland, at the University of Calgary’s Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, once reminded me that incentives only affect the activities and performance of work. Changing the social practice of work (e.g. changing what it means to “write” a story when text isn’t primary) requires reassembling the practice itself.
What can we learn from artists about conveying emotional truths that drive human decision-making? In a world of growing tribalism and skepticism about reported facts, helping people understand the world increasingly means helping people understand others’ feelings as well as their reasoning.
Can we learn from and work with poets, musicians, and theater makers to present journalism through poetry readings, music videos, and live performances?
What can we learn about ethnographic techniques from cultural anthropologists like Mike Youngblood to further our reporting skills? For example, the use of observational research techniques to quickly create data sets when doing in-the-field reporting. Or how sociologist Sam Ladner makes consistent effort to return to her field notes to reduce and synthesise them, making them more useful over time.
As subscription and membership models become more popular, what can we learn from sports teams and churches about building, supporting, and growing a loyal following?
What can we learn from fashion designers about our role and responsibilities in shaping people’s self-identity? People buy and carry the Financial Times newspaper in public in the same way they wear clothes to express and communicate who they are. But what about in digital and online spaces?
As conferences and events become a growing revenue source, they also become an opportunity to establish deeper connections with our audience. What can we learn from experience designers about how to create transformative and meaningful social encounters?
What can we learn about rebuilding trust in the media from people who work in conflict resolution and mediation?
What can we learn from librarians, architects, and museum curators about how we design the information architecture and “user journeys” of our news apps and websites?
We enriched our journalism when we invited programmers, digital designers, and data analysts into newsrooms. Along the way, we coined the term “news nerds” to describe people who work at the intersection of journalism and technology.
We now face different challenges and need help from people with different expertise. It’s time we expanded the definition of “news nerds” to also include people working at the intersection of journalism and art, education, organizational design, and many other disciplines.
Robin Kwong is head of digital delivery at the Financial Times.
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate