We will continue to see the accelerated tempo of transformation in newsrooms across the world in 2019.
Already, few editors and journalists question the importance of mobile devices, where large numbers of readers are consuming news and information. When I start my workshops in newsrooms globally, I begin by asking the question: How many of your subscribers are now reading your content on the smallest of platforms — the phone? Across four continents the number usually ranges from 65 to 85 percent. Indeed, this is significant and an eye opener when it comes to how editors should transform their newsrooms to become mobile first operations.
Enter the “content manager.”
Such transformation requires the presence of a content manager in the newsroom at all times. What is the role of the content manager? In my view, the content manager is a traffic cop who owns stories and decides how they will be played up from start to finish: Do we begin with a push notification? What are the social media components for promoting the story? How about updates? Finally, in a modern newsroom, the story will be workshopped across platforms, including print. But not all stories need to have a print component.
I characterize stories as having short or long legs. Stories with long legs may have a print component, and not necessarily the same day in which they appear online.
More importantly, and this will be key to success of publications in 2019, it is the content manager who works with reporters and editors to explore the linear, mobile, visual storytelling potential of stories. We read stories on mobile devices differently from how we read a story published for print (this was the subject of my prediction for 2018 and we have seen a rise in the number of stories that are now told in a linear style). When a story is presented in a linear manner, the text narrative and the visual images appear in a continuum, exactly the way we communicate when text messaging. We read and we see.
Content managers may have different names, such as assignment editor, or even “pilots,” a preferred term with German and Scandinavian editors. Regardless of what the name is, the function is one of identifying content early in the process, working with small teams to manage the story throughout the day and making sure that stories are updated regularly if applicable.
With the rise of the content manager comes a concept that I also believe will be quite popular in 2019: the idea of workshopping stories and not concentrating on editions. Traditional editors and journalists are trained to work on editions that have a closing moment — as in tomorrow’s newspaper, or this afternoon’s news broadcast. In today’s mobile-driven environment, we need to concentrate on stories and follow them during the course of a news cycle. There is no planning of an edition as such. Content managers manage three to five stories at a time, which is the reason that a newsroom needs to train as many content managers as possible.
Without a doubt, the content manager will be the person to hire, to train and to give authority in the newsroom for 2019 and beyond. It will be difficult to claim that a newsroom is in the process of transformation without this key person changing the way content is selected and presented in a multi-platform news environment.
Mario García is CEO of García Media and senior adviser on news design and adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over