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