Over the past few years, we’ve seen a surge of video forensic reporting, packaged into groundbreaking storytelling from well-resourced international media outlets, including the stellar BBC reconstruction of a killing in Cameroon, and our Pulitzer-winning video documenting the murder of an Afghan woman falsely accused of burning the Koran. Then there’s the damning video that provides a visual takedown of Saudi’s complicit role in murdering Jamal Khashoggi.
Until now, these investigative and irrefutable visual takedowns were mainly produced by a few pioneering departments within major newsrooms, or by boutique forensic organizations like Bellingcat (which broke the Skripal spy story), Forensic Architecture, Human Rights Watch, Storyful, and Amnesty International. Despite a few of these big hits, the industry has faced several barriers to entry. There simply weren’t many people with the video forensic skillset; the tools were increasingly complex to use and the models for storytelling were not yet numerous. And many of these investigations focused on petty or nuanced cases — such as a granular takedown of the weapons used in a bombing in Yemen — and in turn they often failed to reach mainstream audiences or residents living in places where the crimes occurred.
Enter 2019, when the toolkit of social intelligence and listening devices — from Broadcastify to Investigator — is increasingly accessible for DIY video makers, lean local news departments, and international organizations in countries where press freedoms don’t exist. Visual investigations are suddenly a sexy and common topic at journalism conferences and among a new generation of tech-savvy forensic reporters who are graduating college. To be clear, these investigations are not easy, but they will fan out globally because they’re more affordable than on-the-ground reporting, safer (they can be done by exiled dissidents), and they have a cinematic quality that appeals to popular audiences. Indisputable visual evidence of heinous crimes is accountability at its best. Case in point: Killing Pavel, which documents the murder of Belarusian investigative journalist Pavel Sheremet, who died in a car explosion in Ukraine and who was a critic of authoritarian presidencies in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine.
It was only a few years ago that video cameras were first installed into mobile phones, birthing a generation of eyewitness reporters and citizen journalists. Now dozens of digital tools exist for lay people (okay, those with a bit of patience) to comb police scanners, track shipping routes, monitor airplane runways, acquire airport CCTV feeds, verify Instagram video, geofence uploads from a time and place, and use audio and visual forensics to cross-check and confirm, just as a reporter would do on paper in the 1970s. In an era where impunity is an increasing norm, and human rights seem to be falling out of favor, video forensic journalism offers a dose of hope for its potential to go more mainstream and more local.
Adam B. Ellick is the director and executive producer of opinion video at The New York Times.
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
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
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism