We’ll hear from the youth: The kids don’t trust us. My friend, a high school teacher in Columbus, Ohio, says her students question her choice to use the New York Times as a trusted source. It does seem, though, that they trust each other a bit more — have you read about flop accounts? Maybe next year we’ll incorporate more youth voices (we certainly plan to at The Lily). Not by interviewing them or telling their stories, but by letting them tell their stories themselves. What would be really great is if an established, legacy newsroom hired 15 23-year-olds to run a vertical of their own. I’d read that. And maybe 23-year-olds would, too.
We’ll be even better at Instagram: For me, this blank canvas of a platform continues to be the most fun place to craft a new brand and meaningfully connection with readers. Most media brand IG accounts have a lot of room for improvement, which is exciting. It’s like when I meet someone who has never seen a single episode of “Friday Night Lights.” They have so much joy (and Tim Riggins) ahead of them. Publications without a solid Instagram strategy need only hire someone who really understands the platform, an art director or two, and start experimenting. You may find yourself launching an Instagram-only book club or painting a mural live on election night.
Amy King is editor in chief and creative director of The Lily, a publication from The Washington Post.
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Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Carrie Brown Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
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Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
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Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
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Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
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Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
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Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
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Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
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Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
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Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
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M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
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Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
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Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
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Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Nik Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
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Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
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Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
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Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
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Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
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Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
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Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
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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
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
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Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
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Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
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Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change