A few years ago — just as Facebook traffic to publishers was beginning to soar — media watchers pronounced homepages dead. Consumption habits were changing; audiences were getting more of their news via social media platforms and homepage traffic was plummeting. An executive I worked with in 2012, discussing the dawn of the social news era, proclaimed at the time: “Websites are the Rust Belt of the internet.”
Today, the social news bubble has burst. Facebook traffic has plummeted and publishers are focused on diversifying their growth strategies. Audiences are exhausted, the news cycle is more intense than ever, and feeds are cluttered with noise and fake news. It’s harder to figure out whether you can trust the things you see on social media.
But audiences know which sources they trust. And what better way to visit a source you trust than typing a URL directly into your phone’s browser and checking out what’s on their homepage? The homepage visit is the ultimate indicator of loyalty: It’s the repeat visitor who spends time reading multiple stories in each visit. Visiting a homepage allows news consumers to actively take control of their consumption habits, rather than passively waiting for things to be served to them through algorithm-powered social media channels. Engagement-driven algorithms allowed low-quality websites to game the Facebook algorithm with stories that drove other more important or higher-quality stories out of the News Feed entirely. But your favorite website’s homepage won’t let you down, and thoughtful homepage editors work to serves you the stories you need to know about each day to be a smarter, more informed consumer.
In 2019, publishers shouldn’t forget about their homepage strategy. Thinking about how best to serve and understand the readers who visit it — and how to maximize how long they stick around — will be key to developing loyalty, trust, and growth. Publishers can’t control what Facebook or Twitter or Google or Apple will do in 2019. But they can control the homepage.
Nisha Chittal is engagement editor at Vox.
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”