The legacy newspaper organizations’ trouble will continue as they struggle with the demands of implementing difficult digital-first strategies as their print business continues to erode. The last five years of raising subscription prices will begin to slow down as newspaper executives begin to notice even their most loyal subscribers have a price they will not pay — and they notice their current circulation is still a solid audience to sell to advertisers.
The growing need for quality community journalism will continue to drive entrepreneurial work to fill in the gaps left by legacy news groups and their cost-cutting moves. More independent, local journalism efforts will launch than ever before, both online and print, with a surprising uplift of local business advertising supporting the efforts to create healthy local journalism efforts. Community-supported journalism will have a good year.
A commitment to building awareness and content distribution outside the hold of Facebook will give NextDoor a tremendous opportunity to provide local journalists with a platform for engagement and news dissemination — before, succumbing to the needs of its investors, it goes crazy and messes it up, too.
Finally, the pivot-to-digital-agency strategy will be buried next to its ugly cousin pivot-to-video by the end of 2019.
John Garrett is founder and CEO of Community Impact Newspaper.
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