Journalism — our freedom to report, the tools we use to unearth hidden information, and efforts to stop the guardians of the truth — will be increasingly defined by the courts.
In the last year the judiciary has made a handful of defining decisions about the relationship between government and media. The courts have decided whether President Trump can remove a reporter’s press pass, if a court can issue a prior restraint on the LA Times, and whether the President’s blocked tweets occurred in a public forum. Another case required the government to release its rules for surveilling journalists. Here at The Center for Investigative Reporting, we have been battling our own lawsuit after Philadelphia city officials denied our application for advertising on the local public transportation system, claiming the ads were political speech.
Next year will be no different. PEN America has filed a lawsuit against the President to stop him from using “the machinery of government to retaliate or threaten reprisals against journalists and media outlets for coverage he dislikes.” The Knight First Amendment Institute has filed another seeking release of records revealing whether U.S. intelligence agencies’ fulfilled their “duty to warn” reporter Jamal Khashoggi of threats to his life. Over the next year there are sure to be more rulings about government power over the press.
Perhaps even more consequential is the rise of cases that could fundamentally change settled libel law. Since the 1964 watershed case Times v. Sullivan, where the Supreme Court strengthened protections for reporters, significant libel lawsuits have been few and far between. But serious libel cases have been brought in the last few years against BuzzFeed, The New York Times, and Mother Jones. At CIR, we have been fighting our own libel suit for almost two and half years. These lawsuits are often designed to intimidate newsrooms, drain their financial coffers, and even deter journalists from further reporting.
But legal action is not just for wealthy and politically powerful interests. News organizations are also using the legal system to assert the public’s right of access. The FOIA Project at Syracuse University reported that the number of lawsuits filed by news organizations during the first year and a half of the Trump Administration rose above 100 for the first time (up from 10-20 a year during the George W. Bush Administration and Obama’s first term).
The number of cases brought by journalists to unseal court documents has also increased. Among its many unsealing cases, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press recently petitioned a federal court to unseal documents involving the government’s pending prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and just last month, the ACLU petitioned a judge to unseal court dockets and related rulings in the same case. In the past year, CIR has filed 15 FOIA lawsuits, extricating information from foot-dragging agencies that we could not get access to without court intervention.
We can debate whether there are Obama judges or Trump judges, but one thing is clear: The fate of the Fourth Estate may very well be in the hands of just a few of our nation’s robed citizens.
Christa Scharfenberg is CEO and Vickie Baranetsky is General Counsel at The Center for Investigative Reporting.
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots