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