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