The Pareto principle, which is also known as the 80-20 rule, states that 80 percent of your outcomes come from 20 percent of your inputs. It’s named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who helped develop the field of microeconomics. He observed that 80 percent of land in Italy was owned by about 20 percent of the population. Another example can be how 80 percent of a company’s revenue is generated by 20 percent of its customers.
But the numbers aren’t important here: It’s about the vital few and how a small number of things you do account for the majority of the outcomes.
“Personal wellness is 80 percent behavior and 20 percent knowledge,” Rebecca Shern writes. “And here’s the secret: we already have the necessary information. Stop searching.” As someone who goes down productivity rabbit holes, I found this statement life-changing. It’s not only about seeking more knowledge, but improving our daily choices.
You could replace personal wellness with doing good journalism. We know the best practices and what the tools are. It’s about the day-to-day doing, the actions and behaviors driven by your values that become good habits that become the foundations of a sustainable business.
I started my career launching a membership model, then moved to podcasts, newsletters, and apps, with some other stops in between. That was almost a decade ago now — and if you’ve been in this longer, time can feel like a flat circle. Homepages are back again after being dead, and back again after another death. Things change, but slower than you think, and mostly cyclically.
“True innovation isn’t just some magic carnival of invention, like a Steve Jobs keynote with a pretty toy at the end. It is a continuing process of gradual improvement and assessment that every institution and business experiences in some way,” writes David Sax in The New York Times. “Often that actually means adopting ideas and tools that already exist but make sense in a new context, or even returning to methods that worked in the past.”
It was never about putting all your eggs into one platform basket, or chasing every new thing. It was and always will be about serving your readers and now viewers, listeners, users and continuing to do so by adapting journalism fundamentals to ever-evolving contexts and challenges. That means also adapting how you reach them, whether that’s through search, social, an email, app, or ideally directly, and in whatever the best format may be. And finally, that also means constantly experimenting and diversifying your revenue streams to adapt to ever-changing market conditions.
Next year will be the year of going back to basics. Play the long game. There is no magic, only work.
Millie Tran is global growth editor at The New York Times.
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”