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