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