2019 called and said it wants to pivot to 2040. It complained that everyone is so terribly pessimistic these days. “No one wants to work like this,” 2019 said.
I said nothing and thought about how to get out of this conversation, because I had work to do — I was past my deadline for this Nieman Lab prediction.
2019 paused. “But maybe I should pivot to the 3000s instead,” it said. “Why?” I said, instantly knowing I shouldn’t have asked. I wanted to write about how the publishing world will successfully enter the relationship economy in the coming year. I really had no time to think about the 3000s.
“Well, thinking about it, 2040 looks like it will be much worse,” 2019 interrupted my thoughts. “It’s getting hot in here, and I’m not talking about a successful upward curve in subscription revenues. In the words of your kind of people, the planet will have a very, very bad user experience. If you keep heating it up as you do, at 4 percent or so, a genocide is coming. Hundreds of millions of people will die. Dozens of cities will be drowned. Global GDP will be cut by 30 percent, 13 percent in an unlikely best case scenario. The wildfires from 2018 are a joke compared to the devastation the U.S. should expect. There will be food crises, floods, droughts, deaths…” — I hung up.
Having listened to 2019, it can be the year where the alarm bells ring in the broader public. The press will act as the moderator in the panic, advising people what they can do beyond not using plastic straws while there’s still time to act. They will cross the lines between journalism, campaigning, and activism, because there is no chance to solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. They’ll become much more creative in covering climate change and go deep into direct audience engagement. Publishers who have been thinking about how to reach younger audiences will discover that putting atop their editorial agenda a topic that matters beyond anything to young audiences is a very effective way to reach them.
I called 2019 back and said it shouldn’t pivot to anything, just turn up in time, because it could become a year where the publishing world takes action — and for that, 2040 will be very grateful.
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
An Xiao Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Carrie Brown-Smith Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Nikki Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Ståle Grut A new dawn for 3D tech in journalism
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams