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