The president of the United States is, among other things, the media-consumer-in-chief. Presidents elevated the new media of television and radio and, with the arrival of the post-boomer Barack Obama, the internet. But Donald Trump’s media diet, which is frozen in the 1980s, has pulled perceptions of the whole media industry — publishers, advertisers, politicians — into a kind of time warp. The most important platform is, once again, linear television. The most important consumer is a white man in his 70s. The front pages of print newspapers — The New York Post! — shape policy. The president loves Twitter — but that’s because he’s realized that it’s a powerful tool for programming what he sees as the real medium, television.
The last two years have created a kind of illusion that legacy media will live forever. If Donald Trump is obsessed with Vanity Fair, maybe the challenges facing print aren’t as bad as everyone thought.
The midterms dispelled the widespread illusion that Trump and the world he’s shaping aren’t subject to the laws of gravity and time. His defeat in the midterms reminded people that human beings under 50 continue to vote, participate, and exist. The culture is increasingly dominated by a diverse new generation native to the media that, just a few years ago, were obviously ascendant: Social, mobile, global.
And the Democratic primaries, in their capacity as the greatest political show on earth, will remind everyone that these new media matter. Voters under 50 are mostly Democrats; and candidates will try to reach them as Beto O’Rourke did in Texas: where they are, in the their native language. The pendulum of media and advertiser perception that has swung, bizarrely, to the past is likely to make its way back to the present.
Ben Smith is editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News.
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Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
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Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
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J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
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A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
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Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
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Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
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Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
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Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
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Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
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Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
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Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
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Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
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Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
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Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
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Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
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Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
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Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
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Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
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Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
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Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
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Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
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Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
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Rick Berke The year of loyalty
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Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
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Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
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Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
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Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
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Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
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Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
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Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
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