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