If we continue to overinvest in short-term traffic goals and platforms, and if media revenue models pivot at our current unsustainable rates across the industry, we will rapidly lose early-career journalists. We’re at risk of permanently losing a generation of journalists to other fields due to instability — but also because of poor management, lack of support, and opportunities for growth. In 2019, we’ll see more of the effects of losing those journalists in our coverage, audience, and revenue, and thus begin to take on the responsibility to rebuild those pipelines together.
In the past year, journalism schools across the country have seen spikes in applications, in part due to the current administration’s campaign against reputable news organizations, the inspiring investigative work reporters do to hold powerful institutions to account, and the unprecedented reader support for news organizations. We’re seeing a rise in passionate new journalists who want to do good work, but we have too few good starting opportunities to give them.
Those of us who hire, manage, mentor, sponsor, and retain new journalists have a responsibility to make sure our staffs reflect the people we’re covering. We also need to invest in the growth of new journalists who have to navigate careers in a more precarious phase of our industry without as much experience to leverage or fall back on. Those of us who have influence in recruiting need to purposely participate in networks of applicants with a wide range of personal, educational, socioeconomic, and professional backgrounds. We need to build relationships with journalism, design, technology, and business schools or continuing education programs in different parts of the country. Those of us who manage people owe it to ourselves to foster an environment where feedback from our direct reports is encouraged and heard and to grow our management skills as much as any others we develop for our roles.
All of us can participate in professionalizing the way we recruit, particularly for entry- and middle-level journalism roles, so that the best person for the job comes from a diverse pool of candidates. All of us need to support and partner with organizations of underrepresented journalists, including NAJA, NAHJ, NLGJA, NABJ, SAJA, and AAJA.
Our society will always need a free press, which depends on future journalists staying in the profession and being able to support themselves, seek new opportunities in the field and grow in their careers. Media leaders need to commit to figuring out what sustainability means for their own institutions and carving out paths for growth that ultimately benefit their audiences. Foundations and boards need to seek out and invest in new media concepts led by smart journalists who have new ideas about what we need to cover, how, and audiences that are being overlooked.
There will never be easy solutions, but each of us has an opportunity to help bring up the next generation of journalists and pay forward the opportunities and support we received at the beginning of our careers.
Elite Truong is deputy editor for strategic initiatives at The Washington Post.
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Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
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Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
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Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
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Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
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Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
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Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
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Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
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Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
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Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
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Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
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Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
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Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
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Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
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Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
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Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
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Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
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Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
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Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
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Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
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Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
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Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
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Carrie Brown Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
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Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh