This pivot is real. In 2018 countless creators, ranging from market leaders like The New York Times and Fox News to individuals leveraging platforms like Patreon, developed products focused on providing more value to and earning direct revenue from readers.
The global media market is estimated to grow from $850 billion to $1 trillion over the next few years and market research expects user-based revenue such as subscriptions to be the largest part of that. This is good news. Publishers developing subscription strategies will be able to provide consistency to their balance sheets. That strength will make it easier for them to deliver on their journalistic missions.
As we embrace this pivot, we can’t forget that an ad-supported model did support multiple generations of objective journalists. In the ad world, reach was always the most critical business metric in all forms of news media. It is easy to take for granted how nicely that business metric dovetailed with the notion of a straightforward, objective, unbiased point-of-view. Katherine Graham famously steered a Washington Post that did not publish a presidential endorsement until 1976, so deep was the need to be impartial.
In a subscription world, meeting the daily expectations of each reader on a consistent basis becomes essential. That means delivering a product that is high quality, that delights and informs, and that performs as a consumer product.
Those expectations can sometimes create unintended consequences. We have all seen the “Cancel My Subscription” tweets from angry readers when publishers release pieces (particularly in opinion sections) that challenge their predominant political orientation. In this new world, there will be tension between the need to satisfy the subscriber with the information she expects while still challenging her with the opposing views that she needs to make sense of the world.
How will this end? I predict that the global news ecosystem will end up looking a lot more like Britain’s. In the U.K., newsstand sales have been the traditional revenue stream. That intense daily competition for revenue has historically forced publishers like The Telegraph and The Guardian to adopt a more consistent point of view to differentiate themselves from newsstand competitors.
The British paradigm deservedly has its critics (this is, after all, the business model that gave us “Page 3 Girls” and perfected the salacious headline), but in 2018 a Central London newsstand still has a far more diverse array of choices, both local and national, than one in Midtown Manhattan. If our digital news landscape looks like that in a few years, the pivot will have been worth it.
John Saroff is the CEO of Chartbeat.
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate