This year we saw media companies help you register to vote; tell you how to stop climate change; vet charitable organizations for you after Hurricane Florence and the California fires; and connect readers with information about rental homes in Detroit.
Next year will bring more problems, and with those problems a desire by news consumers for more solutions. I predict that this audience demand, together with changes we are already seeing in journalism as it is taught and practiced, and the need of media companies to engage new audiences will extend service journalism to new verticals in 2019.
Embedding product thinking into newsrooms—that is, looking at journalism as a product that can solve problems for consumers—has already laid the groundwork for new topics and types of service journalism. Questions like “what problem are we trying to solve?” “for who?” and “what is the best way to do that?” are increasingly common at the start of newsroom projects. This approach will broaden the use of service journalism to more verticals and outlets as service oriented solutions will be considered earlier in editorial development.
Audience, social and community editors increasingly work with, report on, and solve problems for communities through their journalism. As these individuals rise in newsroom hierarchy, service journalism will gain prominence. Many academic programs and courses teach community journalism, which means there is both a top-down and bottom-up push for this methodology. This mainstreaming of community journalism helps ensure the questions and needs of audiences are front and center—a necessary element for service journalism to broaden to more topics.
A study from the BBC found that “64 percent of under 35s want news to provide solutions to problems.” Other studies have found that women can benefit from a positive framing of the news. Underserved audiences, in combination with a need and desire by various outlets to diversify their audience, will accelerate the use of different approaches to journalism and reporting. And (you guessed it!) service journalism is likely to be one of the formats used to appeal to these audiences and build trust.
Neither service journalism nor journalism as a service is a new idea. But in the coming year, service journalism will move beyond product recommendations and smarter living. In 2019, we’ll see service journalism improve social services, create additional civic engagement, and change business practices. We may even see publications offer toolkits on running for political office or a how to guide for fixing capitalism.
Alyssa Zeisler is the audience managing editor at Barron’s.
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Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
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Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
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Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
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Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
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Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
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Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh