The truth has been known for years.
But at first it doesn’t get much coverage because its impact maybe seems far off or hypothetical. When it does get covered, it gets framed as a partisan debate, with both sides given equal weight.
Then, boom, suddenly we’re staring an existential threat in the face. This is the cycle we went through with climate change for years before the media pushed its way out of false equivalence. It stopped giving doubters’ claims equal weight to scientific evidence. Climate change started getting covered as a real thing, not something that’s up for political debate.
Today we’re somewhere near the beginning of this stage with voting rights. Since Barack Obama’s election in 2008, Republican legislatures across the country have passed sweeping restrictions that often make it harder for black and brown voters to exercise their franchise. And they’ve done it based on a made-up threat: voter fraud.
Stacks and stacks of research show that widespread voter fraud hasn’t been a problem in American elections. But the specter gets raised time and time again, often with racist undertones, as states make it more difficult to vote. And the coverage too often frames it as a “Republicans say, Democrats say” issue.
It’s an issue that’s going to take on even more significance in the 2020 election. Now, the coverage is beginning to shift. This will be the year it accelerates.
More and more journalists will understand this isn’t an issue you can ignore, or an issue you can frame as a debate. Yes, we’re an independent and nonpartisan press. We don’t choose sides. But we do traffic in facts. And we do call out lies.
People often ask the question whether any of these voter restrictions have actually swung an election. Now, that is up for debate, and a difficult question to answer. But it might not be the right question to ask.
Voter suppression doesn’t have to overturn an election to have an impact. Denying someone the right to vote is denying them power and participation in society. Not that long ago, black people were killed and beaten for trying to vote.
And, as we suddenly deal with the ravaging consequences of a warming planet, we won’t wait until voter suppression does actually alter the trajectory of our democracy to take it seriously.
Andrew Donohue is the managing editor of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating