More information curation. Not long ago, I would not have believed anyone would pay a monthly subscription for an app that coached them on how to sit still every day. I don’t need an app for that, thank you very much.
And yet, the top 10 mindfulness and meditation apps, which make up most of the “self-care” app category, reportedly brought in $27 million in worldwide revenue in the first quarter of 2018 alone. I have six meditation apps on my phone right now. And I predict that what tech has done for mindfulness, it will attempt to do for our information overload and misinformation problems.
While there are a handful of very good digital reading tools (Pocket, Flipboard, Kindle), the next wave of products will be built to deliver a better news consumption experiences. Some versions are already out there: the beta of the Kinzen app aims to”give every citizen a daily news experience that earns their trust”; I see ads for SmartNews wherever I go; and although Civil’s attempt at launching a crypto-economy for journalism failed, the startup plans to release a WordPress plugin that gives its vetted network of publications the option to archive their work on the Ethereum blockchain. I’ll save the debate over whether blockchain publishing is useful for another post, but some believe doing so can serve as a mark of quality, or indicator of a publication’s ethics and independence to the reader.
Impatience with paywalls. Meanwhile, as more and more newsrooms and apps charge subscription fees to make up for revenue lost to Facebook and Google, we’ll see password fatigue morph into paywall fatigue. Most of us are numb to the unending prompts to create new “safe” passwords, but the increasingly requests to “subscribe” every time we click to read an article will begin to wear on even the most dedicated and thoughtful news consumers. I would happily pay for a year’s bundled subscription to Wired, The Washington Post, and Medium, at a discounted rate with a single login. Similar to Tony Haile’s Scroll service (which bundles outlets into an ad-free experience), outlets will consider consolidating their offers for paid content in 2019. If not, Apple News will continue doing the best job of curating the news, while taking its cut of advertising dollars.
Cobbling it together. On the other end of the media spectrum, a number of homegrown publications will attempt to replicate the small-scale but impressive successes like those of the podcast collective Radiotopia and the crowdfunded newsroom De Correspondent. Both have proven that journalism doesn’t have to “scale” to survive, as long as the relationships they build with listeners and readers is long-term and heartfelt. I think we’ll see more of these independent journalism outlets lean on each other for resources, cross-promotion, and collaboration, just as ProPublica has done successfully and Julia Angwin says she’ll do with The Markup. Again, Civil’s blockchain promises remain unproven, but the group of journalists it recruited to found its “First Fleet” of newsrooms have thrived on relatively small grants.
Journalist as entrepreneur. Remember a decade ago when journalists were told they each needed to build a personal brand? This year, the message will also be that journalists need to become entrepreneurs. I recently launched my own mini-media company, so feel free to call me naive or overly optimistic.
But I’ve worked as a staffer, freelancer, on-contract, and now a founder; I’ve worked for government-funded media (the BBC), an international news service (Thomson Reuters), and listener-supported public radio (WNYC). Even in public radio, the message to producers is to create audio products that have multiple revenue streams: increase membership, spinoff products, sponsorship, live events, grants. They haven’t moved to the subscription model, yet but that’s likely coming very soon. As part of our new venture, Stable Genius Productions, my cofounder and I are cobbling those options together (hell, we even gave crypto a go) to support ourselves while owning our intellectual property and maintaining editorial control. We’re even documenting the process in our meta podcast ZigZag.
The Google/Facebook duopoly won’t convince most journalists to “move fast and break things,” but perhaps we need to get more comfortable with other trite startup terminology like “failing forward” and “pivoting.” As Joe Lubin, the founder of Consensys, told me, “We live in exponential times.” Experimentation may be the new business model.
Manoush Zomorodi is cofounder of Stable Genius Productions and cohost of ZigZag.
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LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
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Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
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Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point