2019 will be another terrible year for the business of news, and journalists will have to face the harsh reality that no one will come to their rescue — not benign billionaires, not platform companies, and not policymakers.
Throughout 2019, we’ll see the continued decline of already much-diminished revenues from print (which still account for over 90 percent of newspaper revenues globally), an erosion of television revenues in mature markets, digital advertising still dominated by platforms (with new entrants like Amazon increasing pressures on publishers), and in most cases only incremental progress in growing reader revenues.
Furthermore, creditors and investors alike will lose patience with news media, whether legacy (as seen with Johnston Press) or digital-born (witness the sale of the remains of Mic and greatly reduced valuation of Vice), unwilling to risk more money on a digital content bubble that is still clearly not sustainable based on current business models.
And with the spread of cheap smartphones, these challenges are increasingly truly global, including in markets like China and India, where many news organizations thought they had years, if not decades, to adapt to digital.
So for most news media, 2019 will mean less money, more cuts.
Advertising revenues will be under immense pressure, and to fund independent professional news production it will therefore be increasingly important to do the kinds of journalism that people are willing to pay for (or support directly through donations and memberships).
For most news organizations, this is a fundamental shift, far more demanding than simply putting up a paywall and hoping people will subscribe. Much of the news currently published online is simply not worth paying for. Some of it is hardly worth our fleeting attention, let alone hard-earned cash.
The shift thus has to be about better and more distinct journalism in an incredibly competitive battle for attention, about a greater focus on what readers actually value, about organizations and technologies built around serving them efficiently, and perhaps most importantly about a commitment to the long haul — to making the changes necessary to winning paying readers one at a time, keeping them, accumulating them.
Success will not come easily or quickly. It will take years, just as it did in the past. As the old models continue to crumble around us and new ones emerge only in fits and starts, it’s easy to forget (but important to remember) how long it took to build a mass business of paid news in print.
Take the United States, where the commercial revolution that moved newspapers beyond being organs for narrow cultural, mercantile, and political elites and into being truly mass media took more than half a century. It was really only after the combination of popular journalism, growth in advertising, and the development of linotype printing that newspapers build mass (paid) circulation between the 1880s and the 1930s.
Mass paid print circulation thus did not appear overnight, but took decades of hard work and constant editorial, commercial, and technological innovation.
The business that produced has now been in structural decline since the 1950s and it is never coming back. We cannot expect to build a new one overnight. It will take years, it will be hard, and many will fail.
But we have to build a new business. At best, the alternative is asset stripping, continued cost-cutting, and gradual descent into irrelevance. At worst, the alternative is news media that are captured by the state or become instruments of those who can afford to subsidize them for ideological or self-interested reasons.
If we want to build a new sustainable business of digital news in this challenging environment, journalists will have to be at the forefront. That is why 2019 should be about money, money, money (and the editorial, organizational, and technological investments necessary to retool the business of news).
Journalists cannot build this business alone (and don’t need to — there is much to be gained from collaboration, from sharing, and from joint ventures), but they need to play a leading role. No one cares more, no one has more at stake, and no one is better positioned to build new businesses around journalistic values, editorial independence, and the timeless aspiration to seek truth and report it.
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen is director of the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism and professor of political communication at the University of Oxford.
Matthew Pressman The battle over objectivity intensifies
Rishad Patel A design system for responsible publishing
M. Scott Havens Time to swing for the fences
Salem Solomon Correcting our corrections
Tim Carmody Unlocking the commons
Catalina Albeanu Being responsible for what we don’t know
Angèle Christin Algorithms and the reflexive turn
Seema Yasmin We will create our own spaces
Kristen Muller Local news fails — in a good way
Mandy Velez Putting the social back in social media
Cindy Royal For journalism curriculum to change, its faculty needs disruption
Emma Carew Grovum The year of the loyal reader
Tushar Banerjee Interactive ads will be the new face of display advertising
Laura E. Davis More access, but not that kind
Hossein Derakhshan The news is dying, but journalism will not — and should not
Whitney Phillips Our information systems aren’t broken — they’re working as intended
Raney Aronson-Rath We learn “digital” doesn’t have to mean “short”
Carolina Guerrero Spanish-language audio blows up
Glyn Mottershead and Martin Chorley When a tech company pulls the plug on your story
Jonathan Stray More algorithmic accountability reporting, and a lot of it will be meh
Rubina Madan Fillion Fighting the reality of deepfakes
Greg Emerson Power to the user
Peter Bale Venture capital runs out of patience
Cory Bergman Journalism as a technology service
Knight Foundation A year of local collaboration
Soo Oh Just showing our work isn’t enough
Adam Smith Platforms will have to help rebuild trust in news
Talia Stroud Engaging people across lines of difference
Rodney Gibbs A bright — and young — year for audio
Simon Rogers Data journalism becomes a global field
Jeremy Gilbert AI finally becomes helpful
Marie Shanahan Newsrooms take the comments sections back from platforms
Pia Frey You can’t solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis
Alexis Lloyd & Matt Boggie The year product leads media
Colleen Shalby Representation becomes more than a talking point
Rachel Glickhouse Newsrooms will prioritize audience needs
Efrat Nechushtai Journalism wants to be your friend, not your teacher
Nicholas Jackson More transparency around newsroom decisions
Callie Schweitzer The rise of the conveners
Jim Friedlich Meet Citizen Kane 2.0
Claire Wardle Forget deepfakes: Misinformation is showing up in our most personal online spaces
Heather Chaplin Agree we’re partisan — for the democratic system
Zizi Papacharissi Old interface, say hello to the new interface
Ariel Zirulnick Participation gets professional
Carrie Brown Advocating a healthy civic life is no journalistic crime
Becca Aaronson From bridge roles to product thinkers
Celeste LeCompte Local news needs local conversation to survive
Monique Judge Committing to the truth, calling out lies
Jean Friedman Rudovsky Cross-newsroom collaborations strengthen communities
Candis Callison Learn from Indigenous journalists on covering climate change
Kelsey Proud Journalism becomes the escape
Justin Kosslyn Text hits a tipping point
Moreno Cruz Osório Damaged credibility and a new threat in Brazil
LaToya Drake Listen up: New stories, new storytellers
Gideon Lichfield Goodbye attention economy, we’ll miss you
Thomas Hanitzsch The rise of tribal journalism
Elizabeth Dunbar Local reporters reflect on what’s not important
Stephanie Edgerly It’s time to understand the un-audience
Elisabeth Goodridge Yes, they signed up — but our job’s not over
Ole Reißmann The rise of vertical storytelling
Mandy Jenkins Fight the urge to run away from social media
Elva Ramirez News — but make it cinematic
Renée Kaplan Our future could lie within our own organizations
Angilee Shah The year news orgs say “yes” to real leaders
Kjerstin Thorson Time to get mad about information inequality (again)
Frank Mungeam Tonight at 11: News, sports, and climate change
Andrea Faye Hart Doing less harm, not just more good
Errin Haines Say it with me: Racism
Mario García The rise of content “pilots”
Andrew Ramsammy The great re-pivot to audio
Michael Rain The year of the culturally relevant curator
Seth C. Lewis The gap between journalism and research is too wide
Rebecca Searles From silos to Swiss Army knife teams
Sue Robinson Reporters go on the offensive
Shannon McGregor More bogus embedded tweets in our stories
Jake Shapiro Podcasting is media’s slow food movement
Gabriel Snyder Journalism doesn’t fit well in a funnel
Jenée Desmond-Harris It finally sinks in that some people aren’t white
Winny de Jong Data journalism goes undercover
Jack Riley Facebook refugees, from ad revenue to news habits
Jeff Chin We detox from Chartbeat
Heba Aly The rise of international nonprofit news
Renan Borelli Developing loyalty means developing your talent
Matt Karolian Publishers come to terms with being Facebook’s enablers
Patrick Butler Measuring impact will increase audience trust
Craig Newmark The end of “loudspeakers for liars”
Carl Bialik Fatigued news consumers will pay more for less news
Tamar Charney Seriously: What do you do for people?
Nathalie Malinarich Video — yes, video
Sarah Alvarez Simplify and redistribute
Jonas Kaiser Catching up with “Neuland”
Amy Schmitz Weiss Local news isn’t where you thought it was
Ben Smith The pendulum starts to swing back
Libby Bawcombe Haikus of the news
Don Day Timewalls and other reader revenue experiments
Christa Scharfenberg and Vickie Baranetsky The year of the lawsuit
John Saroff The pivot to reader revenue’s unintended consequences
Tyler Fisher This is journalism’s do-or-die moment
Manoush Zomorodi Tech will do for information overload what it did for mindfulness
Rebecca Lee Sanchez We are all actors in the running rampant of political theater
Zuzanna Ziomecka News leadership gets an overdue upgrade
Jonathan Gill Publishers build a common tech platform together
Almar Latour Reported facts, weaponized in service of action
Cherian George Fake news wins in Asia
Cristi Hegranes A year to invest in the security of local journalists
Sue Cross Return of the water cooler
Ben Werdmuller The platform tide is turning
Matt Skibinski Quality and reliability are the new currencies for publishers
Julia Rubin Meeting people where they are
Mike Caulfield Ditch the media literacy cynicism and get to work
Joe Amditis Give the audience a seat at the table
Robert Hernandez Racists and sexists get replaced
Steve Henn Smart speakers get smarter
Steve Grove A reckoning for tech’s work with news
Geetika Rudra The year of actionable (local) journalism
Joshua P. Darr The nationalization of political news will accelerate
Robin Kwong Tech shouldn’t be the only field pollinating “news nerds”
Kainaz Amaria We consider who’s behind the camera
Josh Schwartz A pullback from platforms and a focus on product
Frank Chimero Leave the phone at home and put news on your wrist
Jared Newman AI-generated fakes launch a software arms race
Shalabh Upadhyay A culture clash on India’s growing Internet
Sarah Stonbely Mapping the local news ecosystem — with scale but detail
Jesse Brown Canada’s subsidy for news backfires
Taylor Lorenz Personal branding is more powerful than ever
Nik Usher Three ways national media will further undermine trust
Lauren Katz Community becomes a core newsroom value
Zainab Khan Publishers whose products can stand up to social media giants will win
AX Mina The death of consensus, not the death of truth
Logan Molyneux Seeing social media for what it is
Betsy O'Donovan and Melody Kramer The most beautiful sentence in 2019 is “No.”
Heather Bryant We are responsible for how we use our power
Alberto Cairo A year of uncertainty and confidence
Tshepo Tshabalala Ahead of African elections, unlock partnerships with fact-checkers
Mariana Moura Santos From pageviews to impact
Alexandra Svokos Good luck convincing us millennials to pay
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Readers are only getting started
Darryl Holliday Let’s talk about power (yours)
Borja Bergareche Sainz de los Terreros Entering a more balanced era
Peter Cunliffe-Jones The focus of misinformation debates shifts south
Amy King We should listen to the kids (especially on Instagram)
John Garrett You can’t raise prices forever
Adam Thomas In Europe, foundations invest in news
Rick Berke The year of loyalty
Annie Rudd A more intimate aesthetic of politics — on Insta
Adam B. Ellick Video forensic reporting goes mainstream — and local
Elite Truong What do we owe the next generation?
Elizabeth Jensen Going where the Acela can’t take you
Nisha Chittal The homepage makes a comeback
Mike Isaac The old exit doors for digital media companies are closing
Pablo Boczkowski Reimagining the media for post-institutional times
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen A long, slow slog, with no one coming to the rescue
Charo Henríquez Pivot to journalism
Masuma Ahuja Make foreign coverage less foreign
Jesse Holcomb We’ll get better at making the case for local journalism
Jennifer Dargan You don’t build diversity through one-off training sessions
Juleyka Lantigua Podcasting battles East Coast bias
A.J. Bauer The coming splintering of conservative media
Nico Gendron Reaching Generation Z beyond the coasts
Bill Grueskin Toward a symphony model for local news
Eric Nuzum The year of the DIY podcast network
Ernie Smith The year we step back from the platform
Victor Pickard We will finally confront systemic market failure
Matt Waite “I went to Node.js because I wished to live deliberately”
Meredith Artley Huge demand for…anything but politics
P. Kim Bui The misfits become the bosses
Reyhan Harmanci Selling more stories to Hollywood
Francesco Marconi The year of iterative journalism
Michael Grant More newsrooms experiment their way to success
Kate Myers Journalism continues to be bad for democracy
Kevin D. Grant A year to embrace journalism as public service
Francesco Zaffarano Towards a rethinking of journalism on social media
Axie Navas The traffic hunt, CMS battle, and magazine identity crises loom
Kyra Darnton A shift to depth in video
Julie Posetti The year of the fight back
Steve Myers From trying to cover it all to covering what matters
Kawandeep Virdee Media wants to take care of you
Millie Tran There is no magic — you’ve got this
Chase Davis We can acknowledge what we don’t know
Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau A more sincere definition of “community”
Mat Yurow Content competition from the tech companies
John Biewen Podcasts keep getting better
Simon Galperin After capitalism’s fire, journalism’s secondary succession
Alyssa Zeisler We expand what (and how and who) we serve
Joel Konopo Influencers become the new liberated power in Africa
Bill Adair Another year fighting Trump’s falsehoods
Andrew Donohue Voting rights becomes the new climate change
Ruth Palmer and Benjamin Toff From news fatigue to news avoidance
Stefanie Murray Local news wakes up and starts collaborating
Brian Moritz The subscription-pocalypse is about to hit
Johannes Klingebiel We all grow hooves
Sarah Marshall A return to destination journalism
J. Siguru Wahutu Think 2018 was bad? Wait until you see 2019
Linda Solomon Wood The year of the climate reporter
Alexandra Borchardt Newsrooms need to build trust with their journalists, not just the audience
Rachel Davis Mersey Local news goes minimalist
Dheerja Kaur A focus on problems, not platforms
Umbreen Bhatti The story doesn’t end for the people we quote
Joanne McNeil Building a digital hospice
Dan Shanoff Bet on sports gambling
Eric Ulken The year you actually start to like your CMS
Dave Burdick Seeing our blind spots
Mike Rispoli and Craig Aaron Government funds local news — and that’s a good thing